


We all become what we pretend to be

by shallowheart



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Anxiety, Fluff, Futile Efforts, Isekai, M/M, Magic, Multi, Temporary Character Death, semi-graphic descriptions of injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:01:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28331295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shallowheart/pseuds/shallowheart
Summary: “So it wasn’t for fun,” Yeonjun breathes, an exhale of non-existent air. “It had a purpose? I had a purpose?”They blink, before pityingly tilting the set of their mouth, “Oh, dearest. Not at all. You didn’t have a purpose. The way your life was set up did, yes, but you? No, you were quite meaningless for the most part.”Warning: I'm rewriting the second half of the fic, so consider this almost like a draft.
Relationships: Choi Beomgyu/Huening Kai/Kang Taehyun, Choi Soobin/Choi Yeonjun
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40
Collections: TXT Secret Santa Fic Fest 2020





	We all become what we pretend to be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tealeaves_23](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tealeaves_23/gifts).



> Hi!!!! oh my god I can't believe we're posting already it's been 6 months.... But Yeah I actually really wanted this prompt because I'm a sucker for isekai mangas and this was such an obvious insertion of the trope i HAD to put my own spin on it (with inspiration from my favorite one, of course) and well. I might have gone overboard and I apologize for that, but in my defense any fic from Yeonjun's POV ends up being the most dramatic thing ever written so I feel like I'm given the benefit of the doubt. 
> 
> Bonus: I made a playlist for the fic!! [listen to it here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3boLcWpt2WZ4NbjxICPXI9)

If Yeonjun’s life had a pilot episode, he wouldn’t know what it would be. Hell, at this point he can’t even tell if his life is supposed to be an inspirational drama or some Hallmark rendition of Weekend at Bernie’s. Or maybe he's that one side character that dies in the first few minutes of an episode, acting as nothing more than a plot device to kickstart the story, never to be mentioned again. 

Or, Yeonjun thinks, staring blankly at the paper reading _Artist Contract Termination_ , he’s a pebble that doesn’t get a name in the first place. A face so forgettable that the audience doesn’t remember he even _is_.

“Please read all the details of the document,” says his manager. Two days ago the man was giving Yeonjun a bag of gummies and telling him to cheer up. Now he’s staring at him, dead in the eye with no emotion. Yeonjun can see his jaw moving minutely, a piece of gum stuck between his teeth schlicking and squishing even though he tries to be subtle.

He’s almost hyper-aware of everything in the room―the healthy plant in a corner that’ll die in a week when the CEO leaves for a business trip and replaced before he returns, the ventilation shafts whirring away for a pathetic amount of cooling in exchange, the completely clean carpet next to the filthy, dusty floor hidden under the office sofa. And then there’s the poorly-concealed new list of trainees under paperwork, with things like ‘ _03, ‘05, ‘07_ next to their names and handsome, hopeful smiles in their pictures.

Yeonjun does as he’s told, carefully skimming the paper in his hands, shaking only as much as he can allow himself in this tiny, overheated room. He can tell they’re scamming him, not even trying to hide it, plunging him into debt that’s going to take him years to pay off and taking away his rights to the tracks he made in the company.

“And what happens if I don’t sign this?” Yeonjun exhales, almost tearing the edge of the paper.

His manager just sighs, “You don’t want to do that.”

_So you’ll blacklist me_ , Yeonjun says in his mind. He knows how this goes, though it’s the first time he experiences it himself.

He had hoped he wouldn’t have to.

“Your development wasn’t what we expected,” the man says by way of explanation. Yeonjun is pretty sure he’s lying through his teeth. “If you are dissatisfied with any part of the document then we are willing to discuss it if you have an attorney.”

Yeonjun thinks of the almost empty wallet in his backpack. He wouldn’t have enough money even if he took out a life insurance policy on himself and died in the most profitable way possible. “No. It’s...fine.”

“Good.” His ex-manager’s smile is sickeningly placid. He gives Yeonjun a pen out of his pocket, hands disappearing back into them immediately when Yeonjun takes it gingerly. Yeonjun takes a moment to look at the scraped writing on the side, missing a few letters; _Hlto Busn_. He uncaps the pen and leans on the edge of the wooden desk carefully. 

Yeonjun signs his dreams away like that, with a hotel pen with missing letters, inside the office of a man who didn’t even have to be there to fire him. 

_Side character indeed_.

The sense of finality is more artificial than anything as he gives the papers back, pocketing the pen. He’s going to need whatever he can get.

“Your lease is still paid for the next month,” the man pipes up suddenly. His eyes are level with Yeonjun’s, for once, instead of above. “You won’t be expected to vacate the apartment yet or to pay for that amount. Think of it as your pension.”

Yeonjun laughs. He doesn’t even try to stop it. “So generous. Six years of my life equals a month in a one-room studio.”

“Be glad you have a place to live.” He doesn’t reproach Yeonjun’s sass, at least. Just analyzes him carefully. “It’s a good deal until you find another.”

“Sure,” Yeonjun sighs. He feels like he’s gaining years with every breath he takes.

There are a few more formalities to finish up, but overall he spends around an hour in the office. He doesn’t bother saying goodbye as he walks out the door, too exhausted to form words. He exits the building and makes a mental list of all the tasks he needs to do. Everything that’s going to change. He needs a list of what he can control, but the more he thinks about it, the more it shrinks.

Yeonjun passes by a convenience store on the way, a small, well-lit thing. _I have to buy food_ , he thinks automatically, _no more delivery. Need to save up money._

He blanks out after stepping inside, blinking back into himself while trying to open the door to the apartment, a paper bag with cheap ramen tucked into his elbow. The key is upside down in his hand, pressed against the side of the lock instead of the keyhole. He grimaces, arranging it properly and pushing his way inside.

The dim opening hall into the studio greets him with silence and three pairs of shoes lined up neatly on the side. He adds the ones he’s wearing to the line, slipping out of them with two fingers around the back for organization’s sake, then puts his backpack down carefully before straightening.

He’s...well, not home, but safe.

Yeonjun smiles to himself and walks into the bathroom. He takes the longest shower he ever has and comes out of it with the pads of his fingers wrinkled, his face feeling near-swollen, and a towel wrapped around his waist. He slips into his clean set of pajamas (one of his first purchases with his own money) and sits in front of his laptop (the second purchase) with his pack at the feet of his short bed.

He types in his password on autopilot, searching his bag while the computer boots up for the worn material of his notebook. Its binding is almost too small for its pages from how much he’s used it, and the formerly clear lettering of the cover is faded into vaguely word-shaped smudges. He turns past the first pages, past the full-body sketches of familiar faces, and into the one with _Episode One_ scrawled at the top.

When Yeonjun had been looking for a laptop, he’d spent many hours in PC rooms just looking up different models, searching for one that ticked the box he needed the most. He’d eventually settled for having an external hard drive (a monstrous thing-a good chunk of his budget blown on two full terabytes) and the best screen quality he could afford. He’s never regretted it, and still doesn’t, as he reconnects the drive and opens the folders with a half-smiling wheeze.

The glow of the title screen as Yeonjun carefully loads the program makes his eyes hurt a little. He turns the lights off and the brightness down, settling back with a pencil twirling between his fingers. 

He focuses on the words appearing on the screen, a smile blossoming on his face as he hears the first few notes of the opening sequence.

_The Sky Is Endless_. He mouths the title of the show, a little giddy even after all this time. He hadn't taken the time to watch it again for a while now, leading him to stay high strung and spread thin over all his different tasks. He can already feel some of the tension melting away as the opening hits the last few notes of its melody, fading away to dive straight into the first episode.

"How is the state of the Empress?" Yeonjun whispers along to the dialogue. He's never really understood why the writers chose to start on such an innocuous line―innocuous for the show, at least. For a series with one-liners that made him tingle back in elementary school when he was too young to appreciate them, Yeonjun feels as though it deserved a better beginning. 

The opening twenty minutes are still the most loosely described thing in his notebook. It's a decision he's never really regretted or cared enough to correct; after all, they're merely a setup for what is to come, which, in his modest opinion, is more interesting.

It's after that twenty-minute mark that he finally feels the stress leech off his body fully, taking in the sight that fills the screen a few seconds later.

In his years as a trainee, and scant few months as an idol, Yeonjun has seen many pretty faces. If he's a bit self-indulgent, he knows he is one himself. He's seen fellow idols, performers, actors, artists, and even the people under them. A gaggle of beauty enough to desensitize; smell the world's finest perfume for too long and even it will start to smell like nothing.

And still he’s yet to meet someone that, in his eyes, equates to the beauty of Choi Soobin. Yeonjun doesn't think even in other projects of the actor who plays him has there been one that comes close. He's watched the first episode more times than he can care to remember, and yet he still feels a little bit of heartache just locking eyes with the first sight of him.

There's something to be said about his slightly-long hair, long enough to fall along his cheekbones, and the quality of the length of his nose. Or maybe it's the upturn of his lips, soft and plush and thicker at the bottom or the set of his full, carefully brushed brows over his eyes. Or maybe it's the eyes themselves, almond-shaped, and the color of charcoal.

Yeonjun follows many fan artists on his private accounts, but the complaint he holds quiet and close to his chest is the knowledge that none of them have ever been able to get Soobin's eyes quite right. Especially, Yeonjun thinks, when he smiles, the little moon-crescents that haunt the ceiling of his room on nights when he can't sleep.

"Quite a day for a walk," Yeonjun repeats after him, feeling the words slide down his tongue, "a day to walk anywhere, it seems."

_Now that is a first line_ , Yeonjun grins to himself, immersing into what his eyes see. He doesn't even turn on his alarm, knowing nothing is waiting for him in the morning. 

It's three hours later, three episodes in, that he takes the time to make himself food. He pauses the show and heats water in his microwave, staring at his reflection in the glass. His hair is mussed from running his hands through it, his cheeks pink and his eyes wet from both crying and laughing. There's a bit of a glow to his pupils, dilated as far as they can go like they're trying to absorb every shred of light they can get.

The microwave dings. Yeonjun serves himself the water into his ramen, waits for it to soften and cook, and sits back down on his bed.

Slowly, Yeonjun’s head migrates down onto his bed, lying against his pillows. The story isn’t disinteresting to him, though he has seen it enough times to know it by heart. Knows all the names of the villages Soobin’s party goes through, knows the names of every side character that’s ever appeared on the show with one. His notebook holds everything his mind does not about the series, from minor events to large ones. From the start of Soobin’s journey to save his world to…

No, the story isn’t disinteresting. Yeonjun’s body is just too human, muddling with tiredness as the events of the day catch up with him, and the comfort the show provides is an adhesive to the fatigue that drips in through the gaps in his determination.

In any case, Yeonjun thinks he will be forgiven; Soobin is not one to hold grudges. He has, after all, taken care of him through more than just this. Yeonjun imagines that, if he knew him in reality, Soobin would close his eyes with careful fingers, and press a kiss to the crown of his head. He might tell him he did well that day, and ask Yeonjun to rest accordingly.

Pausing the show, Yeonjun lets his eyes slip closed and his imagination wander. If he dreams of it hard enough, it may come to be that he will wake up in a world where he can make his wishes become reality. A world without scraped pens or termination contracts.

A world where he hadn't wasted his time.

Despite how at ease he feels, Yeonjun doesn't find true sleep for a long time after.

* * *

  
  


He gives himself time to finish the show, which means two days later is when he finally emerges from his apartment to buy more food. It's not the first time that he's binge-watched the whole of it like this, but it has been years since he had enough time to himself to actually do it. 

"You are not yours, Yeonjun-ah," the orphanage head used to tell him, tugging on the short, choppy hairs at the front of his head, "Not as long as you watch that drivel."

He would always say it on Sundays, after pulling Yeonjun out of the church for whispering during the mass. During dinner prayers, Yeonjun would recite his favorite quotes in his head to pass the time, and occasionally suffer for it when it was his turn to pray and Soobin's name left his lips unconsciously.

“You are a dog, licking his boots,” the priest told him after finding him offering one of the blessed hosts to his drawings, “Hell awaits you, and for your _idol_ , too.”

Yeonjun protested so heavily to the insult that he went to bed without his meal, and with an angry, raw welt on his cheek. But his heart was full, he remembers, and he'd whispered comfort to his drawings (then quite awful) of the characters under his covers as his stomach growled.

His stomach is still complaining, even now, as he grabs a few rolls of kimbap, notebook tucked into his side. It's always with him, one way or another, whether in his mind or in his hands. He used to carry it around in his backpack, for practical reasons, but now...

Now it is his anchor, pulling all of him together with no room for moving lest he shatter to pieces. His arm tightens on it as he pulls out his too-light wallet, juggling the rest of the cheap meals he's buying on his other arm. Miraculously, nothing drops to the ground, and he only gets a mildly scrutinizing look from the cashier before he's headed out, bag in hand. 

_Hell awaits you_ , Yeonjun thinks, clutching his notebook and staring over the heads of the crowd as he makes his way to the crossing light. The street is busy, filled by cars going at impressive speeds, and the sidewalk stuffed to the brim. Each minding their own business, heading for a place only they know and following a path Yeonjun is a stranger to. From people in office attire to children wearing afternoon clothes after getting out of elementary.

He has always loved the knowledge that the world keeps moving. Even when he feels like it should have stopped a long time ago.

The stoplight on the horizontal road he's trying to cross counts down the seconds left to yellow as Yeonjun inches his way to the center of the crowd, turning his head at the sound of laughter to look at the kids playing on the side parallel to the sidewalk, almost devoid of pedestrians and cars alike. A small truck rounds onto the main road a few streets behind as Yeonjun looks, approaching the intersection down a small incline.

When it's two streets away, it almost seems to jolt forward a little, speeding up instead of slowing down as it nears the crossing. A bad feeling prickles at the back of Yeonjun's neck. He moves closer to the left, trying to see into the windshield and wincing at the reflection of sunlight in his eyes. The unease only increases as he sees no sign of it stopping while the stoplight moves to yellow, and the only reaction of the crowd is grunts as Yeonjun pushes past for a better look. The kids laugh, swinging around the post.

The truck veers closer to the sidewalk, a sharp turn that pushes it out of the light and lets Yeonjun see the inside clearly. His stomach sinks as he sees the figure of the driver with his head on the steering wheel, hand hanging limply out the window, heavy frame pushing the vehicle towards the sidewalk.

The stoplight turns green. Yeonjun runs, tossing his notebook and food behind him.

There is no spontaneous slowing of time as Yeonjun pushes people back and hooks a hand around the necks of the children's shirts, shoving them towards the center of the sidewalk. Yeonjun thanks his years of dance practice for his quick movements, yelling out, "GET BACK!" so loudly his voice cracks and fizzles painfully.

He tries to move out of the way, himself, but he looks back and sees the windows of the truck right upon him. He belatedly realizes, staring into the inside of the truck, that time was not moving slowly purely because he was not looking. Now there is nothing he can do to jump to safety, not even with how fast he is.

_Oh,_ Yeonjun thinks, _I'm out of time._

The next thing he knows Yeonjun is flying through the air, momentarily weightless. He is one with the sky, and there is no pain, only the rushing of wind in his ears. Then he blinks, and he is against the ground―or so he thinks, because his head spins so fast he might as well be suspended upside down. There are a few more seconds of shock as his head settles as much as it can before his entire body _burns_.

There is nothing to compare it to, save feeling like he's been pushed through a meat grinder. His skin stings all over, and Yeonjun's mouth opens in a silent scream as he feels just how many _wrong_ things are happening with his arms, his legs, his ribs-

He coughs, a squeezing of his abdomen that bubbles out blood between his lips. The pain sharpens, then buzzes back into an all-encompassing ache. Yeonjun's head lolls to the side, frothy red spit dribbling down onto the asphalt, and he sees the truck collided with the light post. His depth perception is so off he can't grasp how many meters he must've moved.

His ears pop once, twice, then, "-bulance! Oh my god, oh god-"

The chatter of the crowd crashes in, clearing to the point of making the throbbing in his head feel more like stabs, then washes away as quickly as it'd come. In and out. In and out. Yeonjun coughs again, but this time the pain is stronger, sending darkness wrapping around the corners of his vision and tugging harshly on his eyelids.

Yeonjun blinks again, a horrid thing, and sees what he feared. There is no nostalgia while he watches his life flash before his eyes, no longing as he watches himself run his body to the ground for the sake of his future. There is only an empty feeling in his stomach as he thinks, _look at what I did_ . _Look at all I didn't do_.

His eyes find a way to open again, seeing unfamiliar faces looking at him, analyzing him in all the pieces he has been fractured into. He sees the flashing of cameras and thinks, _don't look_ , but he cannot speak. He cannot say a word.

The pull of darkness is more insistent, again. He hears the priest's voice, _Hell awaits you_ , louder than the murmurs of the crowd, louder than the honking of the truck's alarm, louder than anything save his own voice. But he cannot hear himself, for he cannot speak.

Yeonjun closes his eyes for the last time, following the pull of the dark, and hopes that Hell is kinder to him.

* * *

“You.”

Yeonjun doesn’t move. _Can’t be about me_ , he thinks, _I’m dead_.

“Get up. Rise.”

... _Okay, might be me. Is this what Hell is? Someone stopping me from napping? A step up, I guess_.

“You are more depressing than I thought you would be. Get up, Choi Yeonjun, before I make you.”

Yeonjun opens his eyes, staring out into an impossible dome of white, feeling the flutter of unidentifiable things against his face. He brings himself up to lean on his elbows, dragging his eyes through an equally featureless landscape and dizzying invisible horizon. His head starts to hurt the further he looks in the distance, so Yeonjun looks down and stands up, pushing his hands into the fuzzy ground and stumbling a little as he gets on his feet. It’s jarring to suddenly be able to move like nothing had happened, and as he thinks about it he feels the ghost of phantom pain clench around his body.

“Finally,” the voice says, monotone, and Yeonjun looks towards it. The figure is tall, with long, smooth brown hair and a round face. Their eyes are relatively small, with a slight upward tilt reminiscent of a cat. With a jolt, Yeonjun realizes it looks like _himself_ , but there’s something slightly off that makes prickles of unease wash over him.

A too-long blink, an unnaturally smooth movement of a hand, a twitch of a facial muscle that isn’t used. A good― _too good_ ―imitation of a person, but an imitation nonetheless. It’s a combination of things that instantly makes him realize without a shadow of a doubt that whatever this thing is is not human.

“You were beginning to bore me.” they say. Yeonjun gulps.

“Are you- Is this Hell?” Yeonjun says, mouth tilting upwards. “What are you?”

The figure laughs, the realest movement Yeonjun has seen so far, but it still does not look quite right. “Why,” they giggle, “Would _you_ be in Hell? Not that there is such a thing for you. You don’t believe in it, not really.”

“What makes you say that?” Yeonjun blinks. The sensation of discomfort seems to slowly be seeping out of him. _Who cares if they’re creepy_ , Yeonjun reasons, _It’s not like I can die twice_.

“I think I would know who is going where,” the figure grins, with too many teeth. It looks less terrifying, and more goofy, now. “And you have never believed in things like Gods. Pity, really, I would have quite liked to hear what you would have to say.”

“You’re-” Yeonjun opens his mouth, wider than intended, “You’re...God?”

“I am _one_.” They tilt their head, smiling. “It’s a fantastic thing, really, how perception affects how I present. You’ve grown with the idea there would be one of me, and so I am one. Charming, isn’t it?”

“Is that how it is?” Yeonjun marvels. He feels a little off-kilter, being privy to this kind of information. He wonders how many people would want to have this, back on Earth, and what makes him worthy of knowing. “That’s how it works?”

“For me, at least,” they tut, clicking their tongue behind their front teeth, pointed and sharp. “Where you’re headed, it’s different.”

Yeonjun freezes. For a moment, he’d forgotten that he has something past the moment to look forward to. “Where I’m headed?”

“So many questions.” Yeonjun flushes, making them laugh again, “It’s understandable. You, dearest, are not going to the afterlife.”

“Why not?” he blurts out before he can stop himself. He feels a little bubble of something rise in his throat―Indignation? Frustration? He can’t tell. The thought of disappearing without a trace makes him nauseous, somehow.

“Because I have something for you to do, of course,” they sit down, gesturing for him to accompany them. Yeonjun doesn’t move, stricken. “Well, it’s more complicated than that.”

Yeonjun doesn’t know if his legs give out on him more than he sits down, falling without a sound onto the suspicious ground. The God crosses their legs, “Allow me to explain. You will not like this, however.”

“You,” they start, “and your life, were both intentional. Of course, you still were able to have your free will, but you were always destined for failure, no matter what you did.”

Yeonjun takes the information in, believing it immediately. His stomach feels empty, a vacuous cavity that holds not even air. He feels like he should be angry, but some part of him tells him that anger is useless in this situation. He is up against a God, who does not hesitate in telling him they ruined his life. _It wasn’t me_ , he realizes belatedly, _it wasn’t because of me_.

The knowledge is not as relieving as he expected it would be.

They continue, “This was, in short, because you needed to be disconnected. Detached. From reality, that is. You made this whole process easier on your own, but I won’t spoil you the surprise.”

“Surprise?” Yeonjun interrupts, “What surprise?”

“I already said I wouldn’t spoil it,” they give him a moderate smile. Somehow, though it is more placid, and Yeonjun gets an inkling that he will regret asking for more. “What you are going to do, daresay what I mean for you to do, is to reincarnate. Nothing too bad―You’ll still look the same, and you won’t have to deal with pesky things like being a baby. You’ll be just as you are now, with some...additions.

“You see, the world where you are headed, for it is a different one from whence you came,” at that they look straight into his eyes, with a glint of distinct smugness, “ is in a certain amount of trouble. It possesses what you’d call magic―but it is not ideal. There is not enough...magical power to support the world and maintain the balance.”

“Huh?” Yeonjun mutters in shock. “Wait, magic?,” he swallows, heavy and performative, “Hold on, reincarnation?”

“Yes to both,” the God deadpans, stretching out in a too-extensive twist of muscles that pains him just looking at it. “As I was saying, there is not enough magical power. The consumption is greater than the speed of production, and certain happenings will further complicate things. But the Deity of that world and I have come to a conclusion: if it needs a second source of power, why not use one that is not using it?”

Yeonjun feels a small click inside his head, his lips and tongue finally syncing up with his brain, “Oh. Is that Earth? My world?”

“Yes!” The God smiles brightly at him, clapping their hands pleasedly, “As it is, the mortals there don’t have the capacity to use it. I wanted to see how far they could go, you see, and it is so very interesting. The world itself runs on something very different, but it still produces magical power―more than it would need, in fact.”

“So what am I for?” Yeonjun grunts, “Why am I going over there?”

“As a bridge,” the God patiently explains, “Your presence itself will be a link―no special actions required. Your disconnection from your reality makes the shift easier, otherwise you would have to perform regular rituals. It is why I had your path be so twisted. You surprised me with your perseverance, but that just makes you all the more intriguing.”

“So it wasn’t for fun,” Yeonjun breathes, an exhale of non-existent air. “It had a purpose? I had a purpose?”

They blink, before pityingly tilting the set of their mouth, “Oh, dearest. Not at all. You didn’t have a purpose. The way your life was set up did, yes, but you? No, you were quite meaningless for the most part.”

_Oh_. Yeonjun inhales deeply, though he’s long since realized by now he does not actually need to. “For the most part?”

“Yes,” the God perks up, leaning their head on their hand as their elbow meets their knee, “That last bit was a magnificent performance. You’re not the first to do it, of course, but you did buy the people next to you a while more. Very gracious.”

“Next to me…” Yeonjun tries to picture the faces of the children he apparently saved―he hadn’t been able to see, before actually dying―and the ones of the other pedestrians. Nothing specific comes to mind, and he finds that he cannot even recall how many there were. 

_Not entirely meaningless_ , _at least_ , Yeonjun thinks. He thinks he might be alright with that, even if it is bittersweet that the only meaning he was able to snag for himself was granted so late.

“So will I have more of...that?” Yeonjun asks the God, who is all understanding eyes and unsettling mouth, “Will I live like that again?”

“No,” they answer, “You can live how you like this time. We’ll give you some gifts, to make it easier, even. Magic, for example. Stronger body, given some time. Exponential growth if you choose to train.”

“The only purpose to your life from now on,” the God tells him, “Will be to live it to the fullest. You are useful just by being alive.”

Yeonjun rolls that around in his head. To save millions, just by existing. To live as he’d like, with no ultimate path to his destruction. Not entirely a re-try, but it doesn’t have to be. Not with what he is being offered.

He thinks of the nights spent wondering, thinking ( _pleading_ ) as to what his purpose might be. What he’d thought it was, once getting a touch of the stage. When he’d felt like he’d wasted it, wasted his only chance when he failed so spectacularly.

“I think I’d like that,” Yeonjun says. They look at him, eyes dark save for a spark he can’t identify. 

"I would've thought you'd be angry," they say, and Yeonjun gets the feeling it's a bit of a secret admission, "Here is someone who you don't know, telling you that they are the one who destroyed your dreams, and you look as calm as can be. Do you not feel rage?"

Yeonjun smiles, unsure how to respond, feeling a bit of a cold sting in his front teeth. "Why would I be angry? I'm already dead."

"...I suppose that's right," the God hums, chuckling. "Always so riveting."

The impossible horizon starts to close in on his vision as Yeonjun's mouth falls open again, transforming his question into, "What's happening?"

"There is no more reason for you to be here," they shrug, a solid rise and fall of their shoulders. "All the better, I suppose. I will thank you for the company with a little bit more, and I cannot wait to see your reaction."

"Reaction to what?" Yeonjun murmurs, dizzy. The God ignores him, light dimming in their eyes and the turn of them going melancholic.

"I feel it an awful tragedy, in any case, that you will be a mortal in this next life," the God bemoans mournfully as Yeonjun feels the light overcome him.

"You would have made a wonderful God."

* * *

Yeonjun breathes in, finally, coughing on the air trying to enter his lungs, eyes wrung shut. His back feels cold and wet, and his shirt is so thick that it clings as he sits up and rubs tears from underneath his eyelids.

He's alive. He hadn't noticed it was missing, in the white world, but he can now hear his own heart beating again and feel its loud, terribly fast drum in his chest. The sensation makes him relax, somehow, and he puts a hand up to his chest and feels the rhythm slow into a steady thrum.

His eyes unglue themselves, and through the wateriness Yeonjun can see he's sitting in a field, surrounded by trees with falling leaves and gnarled, healthy trunks. The grass he's lying in is wild and unkempt, trodden down by traces of walking creatures. The ground is covered in a light sheen of dew, undisturbed save for where he lies, and a few wildflowers pop up here and there―purples and pinks and blues.

“Some kind of Hell this is,” he laughs to himself out loud. The birds chirp along with him.

Yeonjun takes a more intentional inhale, and the air is almost sweet as it comes into his body. He prods down at himself, at his poor frame tinged by the lack of proper meals as he had no money to buy them, and the unfamiliar clothes hanging on it. They are somewhat thick, absorbent, and Yeonjun thinks the outfit might be entirely made of natural fibers.

He stands up, knees wobbly, and catches sight of something out of the corner of his eye. Yeonjun looks closer and is surprised to see a medium leather bag, lying innocuously on the ground.

_This is probably for me_ , Yeonjun thinks, feeling silly, _Unless someone lost it so conveniently._

He takes the bag by the strap, hooking it around his shoulders and opening it to rummage inside. Yeonjun finds, first, a small jingling bag full of golden coins, tinkling merrily. Next, he finds a flask, metal, full of water, and a small compass made of wood. Underneath that is a small amulet with a design of intertwined infinity symbols, and a seal like the ones he'd see online to press into wax, with a printing of a moon crescent wrapped around a star.

At the very bottom, with Yeonjun's fingers scurrying around, they meet the distinct feel of plastic. He pulls it out with confused curiosity (from his guess on the rest of the items, it doesn’t seem like a technological world) and gasps as he recognizes the shade of the cover and the stained smudges.

“This?” Yeonjun exclaims, flipping through the familiar pages, “What’s this here for?”

The drawings don’t answer, graphite lines still and unbreathing. Yeonjun closes the notebook, uneasy, shoving it back into the bag and feeling his fingertips tingle as it loses contact with his skin. He ties the bag shut with the straps, tucking it safely against his side. He looks up, taking in the spread of woodland around him again and the circle of open sky above him.

At least, in this life as well, he’ll have Soobin with him.

Now, the first order of business is getting the hell out of these woods. He dismisses the compass immediately. What use is it right now if he doesn’t even know where to start? All there is around him are dense trees, and if he looks into the woods, more of those in every direction. He doesn’t want to get stuck in here and die of starvation before even having a chance to _live_ , thank you very much. Speaking of the trees, he looks at a particularly tall one, near the edge of the clearing to his left, and feels the beginnings of a plan forming in his head. 

If he can’t see the exit from down here, maybe he can see it from up above, he thinks. Hopes. Prays. Fat lot of good it would do the God if he just walked around in circles, wouldn’t it?

With that in mind, Yeonjun hesitantly walks up to the tree, the roughness of the bark scratching at his palms, and gets climbing. Of course, it takes a lot longer than the few minutes he was envisioning, because he hadn’t eaten anything last he’d thought, and not having money to spend on the gym or healthy meals really wears down on one’s muscle mass, eventually.

He makes it up, though, with a few scratches and more than one leaf disappearing into his brown hair. The treetop leaves don’t make that floor he’s used to seeing in movies, but he manages to balance himself on a particularly thich branch before daring standing and opening his eyes.

It takes him a bit, but Yeonjun manages to contain his gasp. Just barely.

Sprawled out before him is a great tangle of wood and vine, spreading out in all directions until it ends a while to his right. Small, black butterflies, with little streams of gold in their wings, fly all around and land on top of dew-soaked leaves. Birds he’s never seen before chase after them, making cawing sounds, shadows laying over the wood with the sun shining down on their backs. Where the forest ends he can see a large field, thick with grass and a single long river, and a spot that he thinks might be a set of houses at the mouth of a start of a roll of hills. Lining the horizon, he sees the dark blue shadow of a mountain range, stabbing into the sky from somewhere around his left-front to his right. The actual line of the horizon is too low to see anywhere but where the forest ends.

Yeonjun wonders how it would look, to walk up those mountains and take a look at the spill of wilderness, and have it end only because he cannot see that far. A far cry, it would be, from spending time locked in a practice room.

“So to the right,” he mutters to himself, _now_ taking out the compass and judging in relation to the exit. South, it looks like. 

He crawls down the branches, path set. He makes it almost the whole way down before slipping, branches hitting his face and front before a large one flips him and makes him drop on his back. The wind is completely knocked out of him, the ground and roots digging into his back like bullets that just can’t pierce the skin.

_That’s gonna bruise_. Yeonjun groans mentally, tasting blood from his lip. His body is wobbly as he stands up, full of new aches and pains. It’s familiar, if he thinks about it, the feeling of struggling to stand and the burn over all of his muscles.

Somehow, these hurt less. 

He checks on the items inside his bag, tilting an eyebrow up when they don’t seem to even have moved. The compass still falls against the coin bag in the same way, and Yeonjun can’t remember even hearing a single jingle. Strange. Useful, if specific, but strange.

Yeonjun allows himself to swing his legs forward and towards the South, following the compass now. He takes a moment to observe most of the wildlife; the short shrubbery, crowded in spaces where the sunlight hits the ground through the trees. Small bushes full of berries colored red, blue, purple and many other colors, as well as a kind of vine unfamiliar to him, a greyish powdery color with leathery leaves and long, thin crawlers. The trees have trunks as thick as he’s ever seen, full of knots and covered in lichen and, in some cases, long deep scratches gouged out of them. Yeonjun wonders what kind of creature might use trees as a scratching post, and leave _that_ there.

He walks for much longer than he’s ever done before outside of a treadmill, the rough terrain tiring him out so much that every once in a while he has to stop before letting himself continue. For a good long time he fears he might have to camp out the night in the woods, eyeing the angle of the sunlight through the leaves, but "he's about half an hour from losing his patience when he sees the openness of the fields through the tree trunks. 

With the end in sight, the last stretch is easy, and he keeps going past feeling winded until he’s out of the reach of the last root, and can feel the sun hit his face unhindered.

_I have no sunscreen_ , he laments but for a second before breaking out into a smile, feeling a soft, chilly breeze smack against his face. _Oh well._

After that, it’s like his legs move on their own; he’s sprinting across the grass faster than one could draw breath before speaking, momentum building from a slight downhill tilt of the ground, feet not so much as touching the ground as floating above it and only casually coming to greet it. He can feel the burst of adrenaline settle into an urge to shout behind his front teeth, impatient and waiting for the first chance of him opening his mouth. But Yeonjun is not quite that far gone, he thinks, that he-

“ _WoooHOOO!_ ” Well. Maybe just a little bit.

The village―or what he presumes to be one―is a lot farther than it seems, a series of up-and-downs elongating the way, but making for a fun trip. Like a manual rollercoaster, where each part is controlled by the riders. Of course, hoping to hold a sprint the entire way is far too much for him to bear at this point, which is why a few minutes later he finds himself retching against the soil, only one third of the way there.

His stomach cramps, painfully empty, and a reminder that he is alive. If it were not such a burden, he might think to thank it. And he does, with a long gulp of water from his flask, lips cracking as he tries not to choke on it. It’s difficult; he doesn’t figure out how, until he hits his teeth against the mouth of the flask and realizes he’s been smiling (like an idiot) the whole time.

How funny, he thinks, that such simple things elicit a response like that Yeonjun pats down his body (living, alive, _he’s alive-_ ) and feels the tender spots of truly forming bruises. Somehow, his smile gets wider. When he stops, his lips catch on his dry teeth.

There is no rest for the weary, however, so Yeonjun stands once again and continues, this time at a more moderate pace. It takes him much longer than it would otherwise, but eventually he can see the houses go from the size of his thumb to something more respectable, offering up details he hadn’t seen before. A small fence, like those for sheep, around the perimeter. The grass flattened and ground by stepping, ground showing through. The rustic, hardy walls of each ‘house’, though they’re more like buildings than houses now that he can see them.

It truly is a village; and that makes him a bit giddy. He can’t help but feel odd when a strange sense of deja vu comes over him, as he peeks around the place. The closer he gets, the louder a small, buzzing hubbub becomes, unnoticeable until it’s right in front of him. For a second, he fears that he might not be able to understand what they’re saying. Was it in his contract to have to learn a new language for basic communication? Wait, did he even have a contract? Did it matter? What laws would bind it?

But the problem fizzles out as soon as it begins. Yeonjun gets as close as the fence itself, hearing the distinct syllables of Korean forming up the words. Part of him feels a bit disappointed, if he’s honest _._ He’s never really gotten to try the “don’t bother me I don’t speak your language” deal. _Maybe I can pretend to only speak English for a bit? My notebook’s in it, anyway, it’d be fun_.

He snorts a bit despite himself. How bored has he gotten if the first thing he wants to try is faking his native language?

He tries to come up with a plan as he walks the perimeter of the fence, looking for the entrance rather than jumping it and possibly causing trouble for anyone. With the coins, he can probably get a night―or a few, depending on what they’re worth―in a local inn if there is any. Then, from there…

_They said I have magic_ , Yeonjun thinks wistfully, _maybe I can try that_.

With that settled, he catches sight of a break in the fence, replaced by two posts holding up a sign, reading _Jandibat_ in clean, script-like _hangul_ . He holds in a laugh. _Grass field_?

He ignores the prickle of uneasiness, remembering where he’s heard a similar village name before. In the second season of _The Sky Is Endless,_ in fact. He remembers the episode well; after all, it was the first reprieve the main cast got after finally being completed.

Taehyun, the assassin, the first reformed. Huening Kai, the cleric in training saved from a cult. Beomgyu, the antagonist turned companion with a history of misfortune. And Soobin, with his own fair share of backstory still hidden.

A loud crashing sound fills the air, startling Yeonjun clean out of his wits. He sees a puff of dust start to rise from behind a few buildings down the big, main street he’s looking down, and every single visible person turn to look.

_An explosion? Now?_

He should probably be more scared of… whatever just happened, but Yeonjun feels an itch of curiosity as he looks down the dirt road and at the muttering villagers, all dressed similarly to him. He steps into the town carefully, still feeling that heavy deja vu crawl down his spine, getting worse with every step. A few people stare at him, most likely judging his sad shape and the darkening spots of swelling on his face, but Yeonjun can’t bring himself to mind. If he’s honest, the whole place smells a bit...rancid, so he’s not too concerned with whatever their verdict is. 

In the spot where the dust flew up Yeonjun sees the remnants of a building―definitely not a liveable place, for the space is too small. The roof and the walls are caved clean in, a lump of wood and rock peaking at Yeonjun’s hip. 

“My storage!” he hears, a disturbingly familiar tingling that sets off a nasty bout of deja vecu, “You fiends! What have you done?”

Yeonjun fights off the prickling along his skin as the person who’s speaking goes off into a furious tirade. Near word for word from… no, it couldn’t be. 

He remembers the God’s phrasing, the hints he’d failed to get. He remembers the little notebook in his bag, heavier than ever. It’s not really like him, to come up with such outlandish theories, and his muscles feel tense with it now as he waits for what might just be coming.

He doesn’t have to wait for long. There’s a cough as the fellow peters off into harsh, angry breathing, then:

“I―no, _we_ ’re very sorry for all of this.”

A cold, irregular stone settles in Yeonjun’s throat. He knows that voice well. Far too well. He could recite exactly what that voice will say now, if it wasn’t so shocking. 

Yeonjun jerkily turns his head to face towards the conversation, ignoring the gossip tangles beginning around him, and feels his knees buckle, only not giving due to his sheer force of will.

_I cannot wait to see your reaction_ , the God’s voice rings in his head, and Yeonjun has finally figured out what they meant. 

Soobin looks exactly as he usually does, even without the screen; sheepish, polite, uncomfortable, and handsome beyond all reason. It’s almost enough to make one stare―no, not almost. Yeonjun can’t take his eyes off of him. He should, most likely, before someone catches him looking after everyone has looked away, but…

He's taller in person than he thought he'd be. _So_ much taller. Yeonjun can’t see a lot of the details from this far away, but what he can see is the slight indent of his dimples, and the way his mouth rides up to expose his top teeth, teasing and happy. Each feature is like a dizzying trip all on its own. He wonders if he’d be able to see the mole, between his eye and his nose, if he got close. If he’d see every eyelash and the distinction between his iris and his pupil that was so unclear through the screen. If he might finally be able to capture the lines of Soobin’s eyes properly, natural and true. God, the things he wants to _tell_ him-

Oh, no. The _things_ he’d _tell_ him… 

Yeonjun snaps out of the odd trance that he’d found himself in, mouth going dry as he thinks about what this means. Of what he knows. Of what will happen―to Soobin, to Taehyun, Kai, and Beomgyu. To the world.

_Other events will destabilize it further, huh?_

Hell of an understatement. The first season was by far the most relaxed, he thinks, before the antagonist changed from Beomgyu to…

To the Demon King. The same Demon King who owned the sword which he sees peeking out from behind Soobin, wrapped in cloth, pommel shaped into a tiny face with one eye closed and one eye open almost looking directly at Yeonjun himself.

The same Demon King that is Soobin’s _father_.

Yeonjun takes a moment to curse the show writers for being so ridiculous. Good at their jobs, but ridiculous all the same. And now Yeonjun has to pay for it. 

Soobin doesn’t know. Soobin _can’t_ know; not now, when he’s still so distant to his companions, when they’ve only just gotten together. It would rip them apart, the tenuous agreements shattering at finding out their leader was a product of the reason for widespread suffering as they know it.

If all goes to the story, Yeonjun reasons, he won’t know. Not until their friendship is solid. Yeonjun’d never failed to cry, when they pledged their allegiance to Soobin while he screamed that he was a monster they should hate.

If all goes to the story, the world will be saved. The souls killed by demons will be put to rest, the mana will flow untainted by the King’s powers, and Soobin…

_Soobin_ , Yeonjun thinks, though it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like a wide open chasm repeating the name over and over again, beckoning Yeonjun to come inside. A thought is too gentle a word for it.

_If all goes to the story, Soobin will die_.

His eyes go over Soobin’s face again, the show replaying over in his mind and overlaying the different expressions he’s seen on it. The little moon smile, the one that haunts him. His half-frowns, unable to make true ones. The tears, and the laughter and the smirks.

Finally, bringing with it a sharp static and a weakness to Yeonjun’s knees that makes him kneel, is his bloodied, weary face. The one from the finale, a thing that was more or less like a reflection in a shattered mirror of what had once been. Or would be, now. 

It had been bad enough to cry over Soobin when he was fictional. For him to be alive and breathing, living on borrowed time but something Yeonjun would be able to _feel_ if he walked over there is beyond cruelty. It’s enough to make him want to beg for mercy on his behalf. On both of their behalfs.

A dizzy, pounding feeling takes over Yeonjun’s head, making him gag and lean forward to put his hands on the ground as a wave of nausea crests at the same time. _He’s gonna die, he will, only I know he’s gonna die and he can’t I know how it feels he can’t he can’thecan’t-_

“Are you alright?” a hand lands on Yeonjun’s shoulder. He swivels his head around, looking up at the speaker, and it’s― Kai, young and fresh-faced, a constellation of moles shifting across his cheeks as he frowns at Yeonjun in concern. A faint ghost of his expression in the finale ( _he’dneverseenhimcrybeforethen-)_ flickers over his face before vanishing when Yeonjun blinks.

“I-I-” darkness floats around the edges of his vision, breath caught in his chest, “ _You_.”

“Kai-ah? Who is that?” another familiar voice pipes up―Taehyun, he notes halfheartedly―before quickly being shushed by a quick whisper from Kai. Kai kneels in front of Yeonjun, lifting his face and cupping it between his hands. 

“Breathe,” he orders, calm and sweet. Yeonjun hadn’t even realized he’d started holding his breath until he’s taking deep, shuddering inhales. Luckily, his face is dry. Unluckily, _Kai._ It makes it a lot harder to calm down when you have one of the sources of your anxiety right in front of you.

A warm, strange feeling spreads over his body, suddenly, condensing deep in his chest and thrumming right next to his heart at a steady, slow rhythm. Yeonjun gasps, both out of shock and for air, as he feels his own heartbeat slow to match. 

_It’s magic_ , he knows instinctively, eyes swimming to focus on Kai’s face. The feeling is too solid, too clear inside him to be imaginary. _But why are you using it on me_?

The answer should be obvious; Kai is, to a fault, good. He is kind where even Soobin might falter, and free with his aid to those otherwise condemned. But Yeonjun meets his eyes, the grey behind the curl of brown all the more surprising because it’s _real_ , and can’t help but feel like there’s more to it than that.

Kai smiles at him as their eyes meet, releasing whatever spell he’d been using, but something strange happens. The warmth stays beneath his skin, a subtle change to something less alien and more...comfortable. Kai gasps, looking him up and down with a curiously delighted expression.

“How are you doing that?” he asks, and the question would be threatening from anyone else, really, but Yeonjun swears that there’s just _something_ about him that is relaxing. Or maybe it’s the magic clouding his judgement. Or both. “You’re copying my spell… who are you?”

Yeonjun thinks about how to answer that question. He doesn’t get very far before a bout of nausea comes back something fierce, accompanied by the warmth winking out of his body before his head spins. He hears Kai’s voice, muffled and now panicked, and through the dark spots in his vision sees the remnants of the crowd that hadn’t dispersed watching him.

The scene is disgustingly familiar. This time, however, from over Kai’s shoulder, Yeonjun catches sight of Soobin stepping towards them, probably calling something out that Yeonjun can’t hear.

“S’bin,” Yeonjun murmurs, too out of it to notice Kai’s hands freezing on his shoulders, “He’s… h’re.”

He doesn’t hear what Kai says to him; doesn’t even hear what Soobin himself says when he finally comes. The dizziness overcomes him, leaving Yeonjun blissfully sliding into unconsciousness without a real clue as to how he’s fucked himself over.

* * *

“-dangerous!”

Yeonjun wakes up without a sound, eyes snapping open for a fraction of a second before he slams them shut as soon as he regains thought. Given that he’s not immediately harassed, he thinks he’s in the clear. It takes all of his strength to not move when his head starts pounding in a headache that swells from the middle of his head outwards, and when the spots all over his body start twinging in harmony.

It hurts to have to focus on what’s going on around him, but he does it for the context on where the hell he is, anyway.

“Taehyun-ssi, he fell unconscious after thirty seconds of using a spell on his own. He’s more of a danger to himself than to us.”

Had he? Fuck. He has a feeling it’s not quite similar to a bad performance, given it’d been his first time doing anything of the magical sort and he’s not entirely sure if he actually did anything, but the shame stings anyway. 

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

_What does―oh._ Yeonjun gulps mentally. _Oh nonononono. This is not good. Not good at all._

If it’d been the third season and beyond he found himself in, it wouldn’t be a problem. The emperor’s endorsement had come, then, notifying every corner of the world of Soobin’s existence as the ‘Champion’ and binding every village to know his name and face, to best serve him. But the second season?

At this point Soobin is little more than a pawn sent on a wild goose chase. A preliminary mission to prove himself that he was never in a million years expected to complete. Even now, they still have nothing more to do than episodic demon fighting to spread their names. 

They’re nobodies. And Yeonjun has no reason to know who Soobin is. At all.

He was so close to being able to walk away. So close to not having to worry about it. So close to… No, he can’t even say it. How can he, lying in the same room as those he’s thinking of how he’d prefer to abandon? When, now that he feels it, he’s lying on a bed that’s probably theirs, after veritably passing out on them?

How could he live with himself, knowing that the reason he can live comfortably―that he can have _meaning_ ―is Soobin’s death? Soobin who’s probably saved his life more times than he can count without even being _real_ for Yeonjun to pay him back, now tangible, within his reach.

Logically speaking, Yeonjun knows he doesn’t owe any of them anything. Not even Soobin. If he tried to explain, they’d brand him insane even as he tried to tell him how much he means to him. He doesn’t have to save him―probably won’t be able to, either, having only the barest minimum of an idea of where to start and no battle prowess to accomplish it.

But _God_ , does Yeonjun want to try.

He opens his eyes, pretending to only just be waking up and scaring who he’s pretty sure is Beomgyu out of his wits in a fraction of a second while Taehyun and Kai argue. Soobin is nowhere to be seen. Probably asking around about Yeonjun. The room is tiny, with a small window to one side of the bed and a dresser on the other, four chairs, a table, and a door that he’s pretty sure leads to a bathroom. Almost like a hostel, if more private.

The thought of joining them sure seems a lot less daunting when there’s no _him_ around.

“You’re awake!” Kai points out, good-natured if obvious. Yeonjun quirks a grin despite himself. Taehyun stares at him, eyes narrowed into a fraction of their usual size, while Beomgyu’s looks puppyishly curious. It’s hard to think that he’s the second most bloodthirsty of the three, when Taehyun looks like he wants to turn Yeonjun into a ceramic plate set and spend an afternoon using him as a frisbee.

He must be more exhausted than he thinks, because he can see a fuzzy sort of… film, on top of their bodies. He’s not looking directly enough at them to see it properly, but it swirls like he’s looking at them through an eyeful of tears. He checks his undereye with his hand, just in case, subtly reaching up and hiding it as a rub of disbelief. 

He doesn’t have any illusions that Kai is entirely without suspicion. He knows exactly how he works. How they all work, he realizes with a start. He could probably pretend he’s a spy, following them around at the behest of the Empress. Or a traveling merchant, just so happening to hear news of Soobin from one of the towns he has visited so far. He knows them well enough, to convince them of one thing or the other. But no more than that, because no matter how much he’s seen of the show, a person is a person and a character a character, and letting the line between the two mix can have disastrous consequences.

So he’s carefully innocent, carefully honest as he asks, “Where am I? Who are you?”

“Why don’t you tell us that?” Taehyun says, not vitriolic enough to be spitted but with a certain level of contempt that makes Yeonjun cringe. _Ow_. “I’m sure if you know one of us, you know all of us.”

Yeonjun stares, blank. Even if that wasn’t the case, Taehyun’s overestimation is a bit… concerning. “Why would I…?”

“Maybe hold off on that,” Kai laughs, like he’d dumped a drawer full of spoons onto tile floor. Yeonjun jumps, blinking. 

_I thought it wouldn’t be that loud…_ he resists a true smile, ensuring his walls are still up. He will _not_ succumb to Kai _laughing_ , of all things. But he makes his posture relax, anyway, because if they think he’s relaxed, then all the better for him.

He takes a moment to make fun of himself, for already thinking that he’s joining them. For driving himself into a corner about this.

“But,” Kai interrupts his thought process, looking at him with shining eyes and a slight smirk, “You recognized me, didn’t you? You said ‘ _You_ ’, and you looked pretty scared of seeing me.”

_Shit_. It’s really not good that these kids are so smart, is it? “I-I might have? Or I thought I did.”

Kai lets out a hum, licking his lips. Yeonjun can’t take looking at his expression (it’s _creepy_ ―he’d never realized how threatening Kai was around people that weren’t expressly his ally) any longer, so he turns to look at Beomgyu, and by extension Taehyun properly, disregarding the headache from the odd exhaustion film.

He can’t help flinching, the haunting shadow of their faces in the finale overlaying like before. What kind of hallucination this is, he doesn’t know, but when he blinks and rubs his eyes it’s gone.

“You did that before, too,” Kai points out nonchalantly, making Yeonjun tense up, “What do you see?”

Yeonjun bites his lip, nail picking at the flesh at his thumb. Taehyun looks puzzled for barely a moment before something clears up in his eyes, looking carefully at Kai. Yeonjun can’t see Kai’s face, but he thinks he must be smiling.

_What the hell is going on…?_

Kai puts him out of his misery after a few sacred moments of silent conversation with Taehyun, tone indescribably lighter in a way Yeonjun hadn’t even perceived, “You’ve got no idea, do you? It’s your aura. You’re like an open book. I would’ve thought someone who could learn a spell that quickly would be better about keeping it in check.”

“My… aura?” Yeonjun frowns, looking over himself, “What do you mean?”

Kai gapes slightly at him for a few seconds, genuine confusion resting on his lips for a few seconds before he coughs, “Your _aura_. Your magic power? Don’t tell me you can’t see auras.”

“Is _that_ what it is?” he blurts out, caution thrown to the wind. The damn fuzziness has been making his head ache, “Can I make it go away? It’s-”

“You didn’t know?” Kai frowns, getting closer to the bed in which Yeonjun’s lying in. “Do you even know what you did back on the street?”

“No,” he answers truthfully, gripping the bed sheets tight between his fingers. He’s starting to think of something. Something awful. Something that will most definitely be a bad idea in the long run.

But it’s something. He just hopes he’ll regret it much, much, _much_ later. Or, well, at least as long as he can keep the facade up. 

“I didn’t even know I could do magic,” Yeonjun lies, looking down at his hands and letting go of the sheets. He ignores the sound Kai makes, and continues, “I’ve never seen… auras before.”

It definitely helps that he’s genuinely confused on that front―he’d never heard of auras being mentioned, in the show. Or shown. It had always been a surprise to find out someone was a demon or a magic user, but if Kai’s words about restraint are right, then it was all just… unspoken. Invisible because of something _learned_.

Things learned that Yeonjun, in fact, didn’t know. Instead of feeling creeped out, Yeonjun gets a bit of an elated flutter in his chest, an up-and-down that makes his heart thump. What else is there that he’s never heard of? Never seen? What else can he get his hands on?

It’s a strange feeling, so much so he’s _almost_ grateful for Kai looking at him like he’s not sure Yeonjun is all that sane.

“So you’ve never seen auras before,” he lists off, “and you don’t know how to manipulate yours, but you copied my spell―with a lot of leakage, sure, but still―and you’re _clearly_ using magic to see something about us, whether by accident or otherwise, and we’re supposed to believe you didn’t even know you could use magic?”

“Uhm. Yes?” Yeonjun gulps. _Please, please, please_ -

“I think he’s telling the truth,” Beomgyu proclaims, finally speaking up, and Yeonjun could _kiss_ him. He feels a little guilty about it, but he’ll take what he can get. Kai and Taehyun look shocked themselves, blinking at Beomgyu for a few seconds before Kai relents and raises his hands. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Taehyun nod reluctantly, waving Beomgyu off when he fixes him with a wide-eyed stare.

Yeah, he really could kiss him right about now.

“So, really, who are you?” Yeonjun shifts, smiling with too much gum, “I’m Yeonjun.”

“Aren’t you suddenly peppy,” Taehyun mutters unnecessarily, but he’s the first to answer, surprisingly. “Taehyun.”

“Oh,” Yeonjun says, acting fast and getting a wrinkled nose from Taehyun for his troubles, “That’s a good… name.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

Yeonjun balks, “No! I just-”

“Did you know it already?” Kai cuts in. He does that a lot, Yeonjun realizes, but he does it so kindly that it feels like a favor. That is, until he hears the question.

_Score_ , he preens but for a second before schooling his features into open confusion, “I guessed, I think. I’m pretty sure.”

“Guess mine,” Beomgyu’s voice is deceptively enthusiastic. Yeonjun doesn’t even notice that it’s most likely fake until he turns to look at him and his eyes look almost hungry. “Won’t you?”

And Yeonjun, ready to shit bricks and praying to high heaven that this doesn’t make matters worse, answers:

“Is it… Beomgyu?”

The air stills as Yeonjun holds his breath, Beomgyu looking at him with a distinctly victorious half-smile while Taehyun looks about ready to pop a vein. Kai, for his part, looks magnificently intrigued

.

“Are you some sort of mind reader?” Taehyun accuses, though he doesn’t use his finger to point at him. Polite to the extreme, that one. “Are you hunting us?”

“I’m not!” Yeonjun pleads, pushing his voice to be petulant, “I just―It popped into my head when I looked at him, when I saw-”

The door opens, immediately shutting everyone up as a hand rests on the edge of it and a dark mop of hair pokes through. Soobin’s presence is immediate and overpowering―it feels almost like a genuine pressure falling down on his ears. 

Yeonjun resolutely looks down at his lap as he hears Soobin say, “Oh, he’s awake.”

“He can read minds,” Kai says by way of hello, prompting Yeonjun’s head to snap to him with a low hiss escaping his mouth.

“Can he?” Soobin’s voice is amused, at least, “Is that how he knew my name?”

“And Taehyun and I’s!” Beomgyu supplies helpfully. Yeonjun would no longer kiss him. At least, not with his mouth. His fist, maybe. “Probably knows Kai’s too.”

“If he didn’t before, he knows now, Beomgyu- _ssi_ ,” Kai tells him gently. Beomgyu makes an ‘oh’ shape with his mouth.

“I _can’t_ read minds,” Yeonjun corrects, barely a whisper, “I don’t know how I knew, I just did.”

He doesn’t expect it to hurt this much to lie to them. He tells himself that it’s worth it, that his cause is good, that he’ll tell them eventually. But for now they need to think that it’s his magic that’s told him things about them. About their pasts… and their futures.

“Is that all you know?” Soobin reads his faux worry like it’s a picture book. _Maybe the acting lessons did pay off, after all_.

“I-I don’t know if it’s true,” the stutter isn’t faked, at least. The fear in his veins won’t allow that. “I just _saw_ things. I’ve never seen things like that before.”

Soobin hums, and Yeonjun hears the creak of the wood as he comes closer. “Things like what?”

Here it is. It’s all or nothing, truly, now. If he says this he can’t― _won’t_ ―walk away.

“When I looked at you,” Yeonjun murmurs, finally looking up and feeling his heart clench as he makes eye contact with Soobin. He ignores the mental litany of _he’s gonna die he’s gonna die_ and forces himself to keep his eyes staring straight into Soobin’s coal ones. He still can’t tell where the iris begins and where it ends. Almost like it’s just all for taking everything in, one big pupil to capture the world perfectly.

“I saw a village razed to the ground. I saw fields of rice, healthy and full, then trampled into nothing. I saw tanned people smiling and then their faces-”

Yeonjun swallows, real tears burning behind his eyes. Soobin looks pale, lips shaking. 

Yeonjun continues, though he doesn’t want to, “I saw that sword,” he points, “and I saw the halls of a palace, full of rich blue. I saw people suffering going back to a safe, simple life, and demons cut down under that sword.”

“So you can see the past, then?” Soobin blurts out, looking away from Yeonjun’s eyes. “That’s a strong ability. I see why-”

“I’m not done,” Yeonjun dares stop him. His heart pounds, rushed and hot, as they all give him matching looks of incredulity. “That’s not all I saw.”

Soobin closes his mouth after a few seconds, looking thoroughly chastised, and gestures for Yeonjun to go on.

“I saw a lot of blood,” he spits. This won’t be fun to remember, even if it was entertaining to watch, “I saw many people die. More demons than I could imagine, running all over and taking and _taking_. I saw someone―I don’t know who, but he felt… off. Evil. And I saw you…”

Yeonjun captures Soobin’s eyes again, determined in driving the point home, “I saw you dead.”

Taehyun stands up, hand closing around Yeonjun’s arm and pulling him up. Yeonjun holds down a groan of pain at the pressure on his bruises, falling to the ground while all the rest stand up. He hears his shirt tear under the pressure of Taehyun’s fingers. Trying to move his arm away does nothing; Taehyun’s grip is locked on, and not even his other hand coming up and trying to wrench the hold is futile. A shot of blinding panic races through him, blood rushing around his ears.

“Taehyun!” Soobin snaps, ignoring the growl the other gives him, “Stop it, let him go!”

“But he-” Taehyun’s hand tightens microscopically. Yeonjun can’t help a whimper. “ _Ugh_!”

Yeonjun scrambles back as soon as Taehyun lets his arm go, feeling the muscle throb and burn. A cold breeze hits him where his shirt falls open and exposes his body, but it’s not that that is the reason for the way his hairs stand on end.

This is more than fear, Yeonjun feels. Much more.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he means it. _It was too much_ , he thinks. “I should’ve stopped earlier.”

“It’s okay,” Soobin soothes, shooting Taehyun a look. “You were just answering the questions. _We’re_ sorry.”

Yeonjun gulps, running his eyes over them all. Soobin is not-so-subtly eyeing him up and down, probably assessing him under his torn shirt, and Beomgyu and Kai aren’t much different. Taehyun has the decency to look guilty, now, his hand opening and closing like he can still feel Yeonjun’s arm in it.

“It was my fault,” he huffs, legs coming up and hitting his chest, hiding away the exposed skin. “I saw similar things for all of you. ‘S why I got scared, back on the street. I wasn’t ready.”

“I’ve never heard of this before…” Kai says, voice shaking. “Not the whole ‘seer’ thing―I mean, I’ve never heard of someone who can see just when looking at someone.”

“Neither have I,” Yeonjun says simply, putting his chin on his knees and hoping he looks pathetic enough for it to be believed. “I didn’t even know I could until just now. It never happened back… home.”

“Where _do_ you come from?” Beomgyu asks, ever the mood maker, “Are you from this town? Nearby?”

Despite himself, Yeonjun tenses up, genuinely hesitant. Not just because he can’t tell them―it hurts, to remember the world where he’s from. He dismisses the thoughts as quickly as he can, frantically shaping a backstory in his head.

“My home doesn’t exist anymore,” he answers, making all of them wince simultaneously and Beomgyu nearly backtrack, “Demons. I was the only one who made it out.”

“Is that why you’re… like that?” The question lacks tact, but it also lacks malice. Yeonjun looks up and meets Taehyun’s uncertain gaze, taking in the honest attempt. It makes him remember how much he’d liked his character, despite what has happened so far. _He’s not evil. Just careful._

“No,” Yeonjun clarifies, “That was something else.”

The reaction is immediate and bemusing; all of them seem to recoil at the same time, looking at each other and coming up with a conclusion that Yeonjun doesn’t know about. Before he can explain further, Soobin changes the subject.

“Do you have anywhere to go, then?” 

_Hook, line, and sinker_ , Yeonjun thinks giddily, shaking his head. _Finally_. 

“Soobin-Hyung,” Taehyun speaks up, looking contrite, “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

For the first time since showing up, Soobin smiles. Yeonjun looks in awe, feeling his cheeks redden as Soobin walks up to him and extends his hand to help Yeonjun up. His eyes form the little moons he knows, now aimed at him, in _person_. Yeonjun feels faint.

“-come with us?” Soobin is speaking, Yeonjun notices. He pretends like he’s been listening all along, instinctively knowing the rest of what he’s been asked because, well, it’s _obvious_. Probably. He hopes it is.

“What do you say?” Soobin’s smile becomes even wider, squishy flesh sinking where his dimples are, “We’re not gonna hurt you any more. Promise.”

“Well-”

“ _Beomgyu_.”

“Sorry. We promise! Right, Taehyun-ah? Kai-ah?” Beomgyu is not subtle at all with the pinches he gives both of the others. Yeonjun holds back a snicker as the two give similar acknowledgements, and he just sees Beomgyu’s torso go forward and his smile turn pained with a strangled cough.

“Um,” Yeonjun licks his lips, feeling over the dryness. He spots his bag, sitting neatly upright against the wall next to the door, shut tight just as he’d left it. Untouched despite their doubts and questions.

“Okay,” he says, going to grasp Soobin’s hand and almost jumping when he finds it warm and pliant. Somehow, he’d thought it would be cold. Limp. But it’s almost blistering where it meets his skin, and strong as it pulls him to his feet.

This next smile Soobin gives him is almost wolfish, sending a zinging sensation down Yeonjun’s spine, and he feels like maybe he’s not the only one that’s been pulling the conversation along.

“Now,” Soobin winks, startling a laugh out of most of them, “How about some food?”

* * *

Leaving _Jandibat_ after the plot of the episode finishes is quicker than Yeonjun had thought. Merely three days later the debt for the blown up storage room (destroyed one of Taehyun’s rogue bombs, thrown in a wrestling for it with Beomgyu) is paid in full, probably in part thanks to two of the gold coins in Yeonjun’s own bag. He’d tried to offer up all of it, but they’d been strangely resistant, urging him to keep everything for himself.

It’s weird; they keep their promise almost too much, walking on eggshells around him until he’d nearly punched Beomgyu when he’d said “ _Don’t force yourself_ ,” when Yeonjun was trying to lift a box of eggs. _Eggs_ . He wasn’t _that_ skinny, for God’s sake. Taehyun had even squinted at him when he’d said he was older than all of them.

Yeonjun isn’t all that attached to gender norms, or anything, but he thinks if he was he might feel at least a little emasculated. As it stands, he’s just annoyed, and he lets them know until they finally relent on the last day.

“If you’re tired at all, just say the word, okay?” Soobin says anyway, a hand on Yeonjun’s shoulder and another holding out Yeonjun’s now full bag. 

Yeonjun gives him a flat look, “Sure,” and takes his bag. To his credit, he only struggles a little bit putting it across his chest.

“Are we ready?” Soobin calls out after an appropriate two second chuckle at Yeonjun, who kind of wants to punch himself in the face when his knees wobble. Can he be blamed, really? Not even his frankly impressive headphones could do Soobin’s voice justice.

(He resolutely ignores the thought it might not be normal to nearly pass out whenever Soobin so much as looks at him. He attributes it to natural nervousness, and nothing else. Nothing.)

A chorus of positives answer Soobin back, combined with a deadpan “ _No_ ,” from Beomgyu, who carries a rucksack so full that Yeonjun would worry for his spine if he hadn’t seen him lift it with one hand.

That’s all they get before leaving the village gates. There’s no one to say goodbye to, in the town, and all of their business is done and over with. Still, Yeonjun sends a short mental _thank you_ to whoever is listening, for keeping them safe inside. 

And a small plea, for the future.

After that comes what Yeonjun has been dreading this entire time: walking. A lot of walking. Too much walking. He knows, in his head, that they never magically teleported to a new location each episode―off-screen travel is a common practice in media. But it’d only taken a day, while listening to Soobin and Taehyun plan their path back to the Imperial Palace, before he’d realized he didn’t have that option.

Horses were rare in this area, apparently, usually brought by rich merchants or expensive when bought from the stables in the town. Which means that, for this leg of the journey, it’s on foot for them. Yeonjun is _not_ looking forward to the blisters in his feet.

The ground is uneven, making the amulet hanging at his neck swing with every step. He’d bought a chain for it with part of one of his coins, dragging Kai in to make sure he didn’t get ripped off. When they’d asked about what it meant, he’d said it was one of his family treasures, and nothing else. The pitying looks from them all were still a mystery, even now.

It does nothing to help him except maybe form a bruise on his sternum. Yeonjun makes a mental note to ask Kai to heal that, too, or to finish teaching him the healing spell so he could do it himself. He’d started after Kai’d healed the entirety of the map of purplish-green over his skin. He’d only wondered for a second why the bruises looked that old, reasoning that the God’s powers he’d been granted must be taking effect later rather than sooner. But even super healing couldn’t fix things instantly, so he found himself trying to get more familiar with the odd, sensitive force that lies just beneath his skin.

Their journey starts in the early morning, starting off as an easy trek through the plains and slowly getting rougher the further ahead they went. The hills seem to increase in height and number as they walk northeast, Taehyun carrying Yeonjun’s compass after borrowing it earlier. They skirt the edge of the forest Yeonjun had woken up in, maintaining a healthy distance.

He hadn’t noticed it before, but the place looks almost sinister; the leaves shudder with an intensity that leaves him wondering if it’s the wind or a creature on the inside, the trunks creak and the branches lean as if reaching out for them, and the air itself seems to grow darker if Yeonjun stumbles just a bit too close to it.

Because of this, it doesn’t take long before he finds himself sticking close to Soobin, mooching off of his clean, safe energy (“Hyung’s aura is really pure,” is what Kai had said. Yeonjun is not sure if he believes him) and putting him between Yeonjun and the forest. If Soobin notices, he doesn’t say, letting Yeonjun occasionally stumble into his side without even a word of protest. 

“How many days will the trip be, do you reckon?” Yeonjun tries to make conversation, but it’s also a genuine question. The second season was a meager twelve episodes with more than one episode per storyline, when compared to the others with twenty eight apiece, which makes him think it can’t have been that long of a time. But one never knows.

“A couple of weeks, maybe?” Soobin answers back, and. Okay, Yeonjun knows what he just said, but part of him had kind of expected something like ‘a month’ or something. ‘A couple of weeks’ is both relieving and distantly horrifying. 

“Oh,” Yeonjun says, and doesn’t ask again.

* * *

By the time they reach the first village (two days straight of travel. Yeonjun wants to _die_ . _Again_.) he’s almost forgotten that he’s not supposed to trust pretty much anyone in the place. Almost, because he remembers to read up on his notebook, and realizes just how dangerous the place is two seconds before Taehyun throws a dagger over Yeonjun’s head and a would-be murderer instead just becomes the reason Yeonjun stinks in the morning. He’s a little terrified, and most definitely somewhat traumatized, but not as much as he thinks he would be. Certainly not as much as Taehyun seems to think he is, when he’d personally taken all of Yeonjun’s clothes and washed them until they were better than before.

What scares him is the thought he might be desensitized to it, before he realizes what it is. Dying once really throws the lives of strangers into perspective. Part of the fear, he knows now, is the unknown behind the veil. The wondering of where they go once their hearts stop beating.

Now that he knows, well. The mystery is blown, and suddenly dying seems a lot more mundane than he’d felt it was before. Not as big of a curse to inflict to others, though he’s still decently horrified at the thought of it. He tries to apply that same logic to letting what will happen to Soobin continue and comes up short, though. 

He finds out a lot of things that night. That he’s more selfish than he’d originally thought. That drinking water helps when he can’t breathe. And that Kai is a surprisingly good cuddler, and even better at respecting boundaries.

Yeonjun gets the last helping of fruit as his breakfast before he goes to the small, nearby pond to wash up. Soobin is the one to accompany him, apparently shaken by the thought of Yeonjun encountering anyone else before being taught to defend himself, and Yeonjun would appreciate the sentiment if he wasn’t so very, very gay. What nearly kills him is Soobin offering him his _underwear_ coming out of the water, staring straight at Yeonjun despite him being indecent and causing him to fall backwards into the pond. 

Yeonjun will say something: Death might be meaningless now, but he wishes no one the torture of drowning. His nose burned for _hours_.

The village they go into is appropriately being controlled by a demon, a mimic that had taken the form of the corrupt leader transformed the place years ago into a militant, murderous free-for-all. Yeonjun takes one look at the ‘mayor’ and pulls Kai aside to explain the ‘vision’ he had when seeing him. It takes them two days to expose his scheme and free the small rebellious posse of villagers, and another one to kill all of the smaller mimics posing as military members. The whole process goes a lot smoother than in the show, he thinks, even though he doesn’t remember exactly who was a demon and who was a person, which means that they tediously have to use Kai’s holy magic (and by extension Yeonjun’s not-so-holy spellwork) on every single one of them.

By the time they’re done, Yeonjun could recite the spell in his sleep. He never wants to use it again.

However, finishing this quickly means that they try to get moving almost immediately, and Yeonjun mourns the chance to let his blisters heal naturally (he’s named the only one that hadn’t burst Minty). The forest is behind them at this point, which means that he really doesn’t have an excuse to stick to Soobin anymore, but he does it anyway and nearly cheers when Soobin doesn’t question it.

What he does question makes him _cringe_ , though, “Tell me about yourself.”

“There’s not much to tell,” Yeonjun gripes, tightening the grip he has on his bag, “You know the basics right now. Choi Yeonjun, twenty three, etcetera.”

“I don’t mean that kind of thing,” Soobin laughs, a _hahaak_ that makes Yeonjun fear he’s choking. It’s stupidly endearing. “I mean―What did you want to be, as a child? Your favorite color? Favorite food? I’m listening for what you want to tell, if it’s not too much to ask.”

Yeonjun falters in his steps, nearly hitting Kai walking behind him. He apologizes quickly and forces his numbing legs to continue moving, “Oh.”

“Am I out of line?” Soobin sounds genuinely distressed at making Yeonjun uncomfortable, which is just plain _weird_ . It’s been weird that they seem to just―assimilate him, all this time, despite knowing practically nothing about him and thinking he was going to hurt them at first. The fact that Soobin even has to ask for his favorite _color_ makes him think that he’s really put himself at an unfair advantage over them. Lying to them about being a seer is one thing. He doesn’t have to lie about everything else.

“I wanted to be an… entertainer,” Yeonjun admits, taking in Soobin’s surprised stare, “I mean, like a dancer, and a singer. I wanted to make people feel like music makes me feel.”

“Like an empathy spell?” Kai pipes up, ever the eavesdropper. Yeonjun lets himself laugh when Soobin shoots him a scandalized look, feeling his eyes squeeze shut with the force of it. He doesn’t really like the way his teeth show when he laughs this way, but he reasons that’s not good enough for him to stop. When he opens his eyes again, Soobin is gone, and Beomgyu lets out an indignant squeak that lets him know exactly where he went.

“Copying me, Soobinie?” Yeonjun teases, looking back and seeing Soobin looking at him with an unrecognizable expression and the tips of his ears pink. His embarrassment is understandable; he’s never done _that_ before. 

Soobin seems to shake out of his stupor, long legs catching up in an instant and finally letting poor Beomgyu breathe, “Ah, sorry. I guess I was just shocked. You sing and dance?”

“Yeah,” Yeonjun nods, suddenly feeling shy himself, “I’m not the best, but I was good enough. The―leader? He said I was really good, at least until-”

_I got fired_ , he thinks bitterly. He’s thinking of how to explain the concept of idol training (a monastery kind of place, maybe?) when he looks up and sees Soobin’s face is carefully schooled into neutrality. A stone drops in his stomach; had Soobin been expecting him to be a prodigy? Crappy luck there.

“Until what?” It’s Taehyun who asks, because everyone is listening despite their supposed struggle due to distance. Yeonjun once again tries to find words.

“The… place I lived in was like a training house,” he tries, grimacing, “We would practice every day for hours to get a chance to become performers and pay the house back for taking care of us. Very few got chosen to join the house in the first place; I was very lucky. I was selected to perform, but I didn’t do well for a really long time so they said I couldn’t have their support anymore. I had to find another job to pay them back. That was when the demons attacked.”

“What of your parents?” Beomgyu pipes up. Yeonjun looks down, making the universally understood gesture. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“What, so you were just making money for the house?” Yeonjun can _hear_ the frown in Taehyun’s voice. “Did you get any for yourself?”

“A little,” he shrugs, “I could buy food to eat once or twice a day, if I saved it. In this house, after you are chosen to entertain the customers, you have to pay for your own items, and they give you a home.”

“And what happened if you didn’t do well immediately?” is what Kai asks. Yeonjun looks at him, at the spark of anger behind his eyes. They’ve all but stopped walking for a moment.

“You were dealt with appropriately,” Yeonjun remembers all the extra practice sessions well. A hand comes up to his neck instinctively in memory to the pain of singing his voice hoarse until they were satisfied. “If you didn’t improve after that, they’d take you out to make more space for others. Or they’d find other ways for you to pay them back.”

His supplemental acting lessons were there for a reason. They were exactly why he hadn’t expected to actually get fired so soon. He’s thankful for them now, but back then they’d only been a sign of his failure.

Yeonjun nearly elbows Soobin in the ribs when the latter wraps his arms around Yeonjun fiercely, tugging him up and against his chest while his head rests on Yeonjun’s shoulder. The sensation would be nice if he weren’t so confused by the fact that he can feel a wet spot on his clothes where Soobin’s eyes meet the fabric. A help-seeking look at the rest finds Beomgyu and Kai in similar situations, with Taehyun wearing a firm, enraged scowl on his face.

He tries to decipher their babbling and can’t for the life of him figure it out, and Taehyun doesn’t say anything except an intent to slay the owner of the company if they ever meet. Yeonjun is both endeared and concerned for their mental welfare.

Even after they stop crying, they refuse to explain. All Yeonjun gets are reassurances that he’s a _great_ dancer and a _great_ singer and a promise that he never ever has to do anything he doesn’t want to. He’s starting to get scared of whatever they’re thinking he went through, but consoles himself with thinking it can’t be so far from the truth as to cause concern and just bears with all of them from then on asking if they can do things for him before _everything_ until he threatens to use his wax seal on their asses.

He does go to sleep with both Kai and Beomgyu clinging to an arm and a leg of his, respectively, which as reassuring as it is also makes him struggle to move at all and makes him steal Taehyun’s prized portable coffeemaker to regain energy when he wakes up.

Also after that, Soobin takes to not moving away when they bump into each other in the middle of the road, and on one occasion he lets Yeonjun take his hand (it had been an accident, he swears it to this day) and holds it until they set up for lunch.

It’s… surprisingly nice. He rewards them by singing a short song by IU, and can’t help the pleased red burn in his face when they tease him about hiding his talents. Taehyun makes him promise to teach him to dance (“I always wanted to learn. It helps with flexibility, right?”) when they reach the palace.

Soobin just stares at him, a contemplative expression on his face, before offering to lighten Yeonjun’s pack since his own is now emptier and getting a sandal to the face for his troubles as well as a rushed apology blaming it on instinct.

* * *

Yeonjun gets a bit scared when they finally stand in front of the palace, four days ahead of schedule thanks to bypassing a village composed entirely of demons altogether (he’s not guilty about it; no humans means no one to save, after all) at the cost of spending a few more rations and gathering more sorrel and wild game to eat than before. Minty the blister has gone through several generations now, slowly traveling down Yeonjun’s foot. He thinks it might be on the seventh right about now.

No matter how much he hesitates going into the palace, though, Soobin is adamant about not keeping the Empress waiting. Which explains why it’s Kai, Taehyun, and Soobin who go in, Beomgyu unable to enter as someone who was technically considered a heavier threat and Yeonjun set up as his handler.

It’s not that bad, all things considered. Beomgyu is sweet, if a little unsettling in his liberal admittance of his ‘honorable kills’ and his tendency to speak on just the wrong side of loud. But given enough entertainment, he’s pretty decent company. Yeonjun buys a medium slate tablet and a few chips from the long marketplace surrounded by the small capital city, draws a bunch of squares, and teaches Beomgyu how to play checkers in a few minutes. It takes a while, but soon the both of them are locked together, playing the game on one of the fence walls surrounding the palace as the sun crawls down the sky.

He’s frankly relieved he doesn’t have to go in, and he says as much to Beomgyu, who agrees wholeheartedly.

“Taehyunnie said it would be too stuffy for me,” he says, wrinkling his nose. Yeonjun quirks an eyebrow:

“Taehyunnie?”

Beomgyu’s ears lighting up a firetruck red is not what he expects, “Ah, it slipped―We’ve just had so much time just walking that we’ve been talking a lot. We call Kai-ah Hyuka, too, so it’s not exactly a secret…”

“...Except from Soobin and I,” Yeonjun finishes, enjoying the way Beomgyu sputters and flails, “Calm down, I’m just making fun. What do they call you?”

“Gyu,” Beomgyu blurts out, fast like a bandaid, “It’s-”

“Cute. You really have been getting closer,” Yeonjun’s not sure why he feels this happy for them; the subtle changes can’t mean anything good for the future he knows staying intact. The thought makes him pause and look at Beomgyu again.

“Do you think we can squeeze in some hand-to-hand lessons right now?” Yeonjun enjoys the way Beomgyu’s whole face lights up. It makes the pummeling he gets almost worth it.

By the time Taehyun, Soobin, and Kai come out, Yeonjun feels like his bruises have bruises, the Minty line has been extinguished, and Beomgyu buzzes with newfound energy while the rest of them are exhausted, prompting them to use the money that the Empress apparently awarded Soobin to spend while they wait for the audience to plan the next step.

Yeonjun knows that sometime between now and then they’ll get news from the Demon King in the form of a dying man delivering a scroll to the palace. He also knows that the Empress will immediately decree Soobin as her Champion, sending him off towards the School of Magic in another city to rally their forces. What he doesn’t know is exactly _when_ , and that sets him on edge.

Everyone else seems to enjoy the reprieve, unaware of Yeonjun’s timeline issues, already planning what to do while they wait for the summons. When it’s Yeonjun’s turn, what comes out of his mouth is: “I want to learn to fight more.” 

Soobin drops the ramen in his chopsticks straight back into the broth, making a small _splash_. Apart from that, the table is deathly silent.

“You mean… defending yourself?” Kai delicately enunciates, “Yeonjun-hyung, I’ve already told you you’re doing extremely well learning spells, and Gyu-hyung’s taught you hand-to-hand self defense. Do you mean you want a wider variety?”

“I don’t mean self-defense,” Yeonjun clarifies, tightening his fist. “I want to fight beside all of you. I know I can do it. I want to use a sword, or a knife, or learn martial arts. Anything.”

Soobin stands up, his chair clattering back and to the floor and making Yeonjun jump. When he looks, his face is thunderous, and to Yeonjun he looks more like a wolf than ever with his top lip curled back into an almost-snarl.

He doesn’t say anything, just looks at Yeonjun thoroughly for a few seconds, and his face morphs into something sadder. Akin to disappointment, except Yeonjun has no idea why he would be disappointed at him wanting to fight. He’s about to speak up when Soobin walks out, throwing the bag of money onto the table and slamming his way out of the door.

The―thankfully empty―restaurant is deafening in its echoes.

“What did I say?” Yeonjun asks into the open air. Taehyun groans.

“Hyung is angry,” he says slowly, deliberately, “Because you pretty much just said you don’t think he’s strong enough to protect you. Or any of us, for that matter.”

Yeonjun pales, blood turning to ice, “But that’s not it at _all_! I never said that! I just want to do my part-”

“To Soobin-Hyung, when he― _we_ promised not to hurt you, that means not letting you get hurt,” Kai elaborates, extending a hand and patting Yeonjun’s head. It would be condescending from anyone else, but Yeonjun knows Kai well enough to just let him do it, “For the person who he thinks he’s supposed to protect to throw themselves in front of harm is basically like saying they wouldn’t be any safer _behind_ the front lines. Hyung takes that kind of stuff really seriously; He’s probably even more upset because he knows you _are_ capable. Do you get it?”

“So he’s upset because I’m denying him the right to protect me,” Yeonjun twists up his mouth, pensive, “Because he thinks I think I can do it better?”

Beomgyu, strangely silent so far, corroborates, and adds, “There’s a bit more to it, probably. It’s not really my custom, but it probably also made him feel disrespected for you to not bring this up in private first.”

Yeonjun shoves his head into his hands, moaning in dismay, “Fuck, this is awful. Why did nobody _tell_ me?”

Kai shrugs, suspiciously nonchalant, “We just figured you knew, since you’ve been really good about it so far. Don’t worry too hard over it, Hyung. He’ll come back and you can explain you didn’t know, and you can talk about it. Just let him cool off.”

Luckily, they’d already known which inn and rooms they were staying at, so they can pay and leave the restaurant without worrying if Soobin will be able to find them or not. Yeonjun’s stomach is an awful mess of knots as he lies in bed, freshly bathed in the public baths and wearing the sleep shirt that came with the room that’s a little short on him. 

He’d been doing so well. Just getting to the second audience would be a quarter of the third season done, and if he was careful he could change isolated events and still keep mostly the same timeline until the moment he’s supposed to save Soobin. How will he save Soobin? That’s a whole other story. 

Yeonjun supposes that’s part of the problem now. All this time he’d been thinking of Soobin as someone to save instead of an equal, and Soobin had been doing the same to him but in reverse. A true friendship can’t exist if they’re not fundamentally on the same playing field.

_But you don’t want a friendship_ , mocks a small, steely voice. Yeonjun resolutely pushes it down.

It takes a few hours, but the sun is just barely setting as there’s a gentle knock on his door, so light he can barely hear it. And he’d specifically asked no one to come in or knock, waiting for a sign, so it can only truly be one person. Yeonjun gulps, hands shaking as he opens the door slowly.

Soobin looks absolutely dead on his feet. His face droops with tiredness, eyes taking more than five seconds per blink, and his reflexes are slow as he tries to move forward to try to speak to Yeonjun and trips on the carpet in front of the room, making him grab onto Yeonjun to steady himself and nearly sending him into cardiac arrest.

“Soobin,” Yeonjun whispers, hearing a small grunt of acknowledgement before sighing and pulling him into his room. He slumps just barely fighting against Yeonjun’s grip, but not seriously. If it were serious he’d already be free.

Soobin, breath warm against Yeonjun’s ear, says, “Kai-ah told me.” Yeonjun goes “ah,” and curses the day he ever met Kai Kamal Huening.

If he lets Soobin fall asleep, dirty and exhausted as he is, Yeonjun knows that he’ll just flee in the morning for his own room. Instead, he uses one of the little spouts for water, turns it as cold as it can go, fills a glass, and throws it in Soobin’s face.

The effect is quick. Soobin shoots up from where he’s lying on the bed, spluttering and spitting as streams of cold water run down his face. Yeonjun sets the glass down as Soobin stares at him in complete disbelief.

“Why did you do that?” he says, incredulous. Yeonjun holds back an inappropriate smirk.

“I need you clean if you’re gonna crash in my room after a fight. And,” Yeonjun feels his face flush, “I need to say sorry properly. Go wash up.”

Soobin does as he’s told, stepping into the bathroom robotically. Yeonjun _screams_ silently, holding back a litany of cuss words that would make his old priest cry. His heart pounds, Soobin’s breathing still tingling over the skin of his neck and ear and overall making all of it worse. He has to be strong, though, and cool-headed, so he steels himself and waits patiently for Soobin to come out. He can feel his soul leave his body when he does, but only half dressed, wearing no shirt like a poorly concealed romantic moment in a drama. Yeonjun feels sick. Technically, he _is_ in a drama, which makes him want to stab something while also keel over and expire.

“Well?” Soobin gestures a ‘ta-da’, causing the muscles on his arms to flex almost imperceptibly. Yeonjun swallows around a dry mouth and gestures for Soobin to sit down.

And he hugs him. Soobin freezes under Yeonjun as he tucks himself comfortably against his collarbone, sighing when he feels him tentatively wrap his arms around Yeonjun’s back and grip at his nightshirt. 

“‘M sorry,” Yeonjun says first, resisting the urge to sniffle, “I messed up. I just wanted to fight with you, but not like this.”

Soobin’s breathing answers for him, a slow, long sigh that releases tension in his arms and core. Yeonjun swallows again, a stone lodged in his throat.

“I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about it beforehand,” Yeonjun rubs his nose on Soobin’s skin, “That was my bad. And I’m sorry that I made you feel like you couldn’t do anything, because it’s not true.”  
  


Soobin hums again. Enough moments pass that Yeonjun kind of wants to disappear for a short time, before he says, “I forgive you. I’m sorry, too, for not letting you explain and for storming out.”

Immediately, it’s as if a weight rushes off of Yeonjun’s chest, “I forgive you, too.”

Soobin’s hand comes down to rub at his back, and Yeonjun realizes that maybe he wasn’t all that successful trying to stop himself from crying. He lets it go, allowing the tears to flow in a surprising bit of catharsis. Soobin doesn’t stop hugging him even when his whole side is wet and sticky, which really says something about his patience.

It’s totally accidental that Yeonjun falls asleep on him. A product of circumstance, and really Soobin also falls asleep, so it’s both of their faults. 

When he wakes up, looks at Soobin’s sleeping face, and closes his eyes again?

_That’s_ at least a little bit intentional.

* * *

They’re already on the road again, this time with proper horses, and supplies, and basically all they need now that the Empress actually believes they can do something about the situation. Yeonjun would have some choice words for her if he didn’t know that she could also take it all away if they’re not careful.

He uses his notebook once more, reading up on the next few events. Getting to the School and talking will be relatively easy; He has no doubts that Soobin’s strange ability to turn everything in his favor will succeed again, so he doesn’t have to interfere there.

What worries him is what comes after. They’re almost to where Soobin will find out about his true heritage, and go off with them to take the Demon King down personally over letting someone else do it. A lot of the season after the one they’re currently in―the final season, his brain supplies unhelpfully―was flashbacks, meant to symbolize Soobin’s life flashing before his eyes, so Yeonjun doesn’t have a lot of information on when they go or what will happen there until the final stretch. It’s a bit terrifying, but he can deal.

What he can’t deal with, however, is waking up in the middle of the night to Kai and Beomgyu talking, far too loud for a midnight conversation, and it going something like this:

“Hyung, I don’t want to leave him out.”

“Neither do I! Neither do I, but all of your customs are so _weird_ about this. How do we know he won’t react badly?”

“If we explain it clearly-”

“He might still-”

And so on. He’s never had a chance to be a gossip before, so this whole eavesdropping on important conversations is pretty new to him. Which is probably why, as soon as everyone wakes up, he pulls Taehyun aside and spills the whole of it to him, throwing in some modern knowledge about polyamory to tickle his brain, and watches him slowly turn a peculiar shade of purple and excuse himself. He hears a few choking sounds that are distinctly Beomgyu from behind the line of trees, and a couple of new ones that he guesses are Kai, before a series of furious whisper-yells and a mysterious, if ominous silence.

Ah, young love. It’s enough to bring a tear to his eye.

He whispers the news to Soobin while helping him cook breakfast, enjoying the way he chokes on the illegally-eaten sausage in his mouth before he goes disgustingly fond and praises the fact that the three of them fit well together. Yeojun bites back a _do you think we’d work well together_ and buries his face in the pan, nearly burning his eyebrows by a fraction of a centimeter but ending up with the crispiest celebratory bacon he’s ever made to date.

It’s a good day, even if they do run into a few stray demons around four and have to camp early. It just means that Yeonjun can have a round beating everyone except Taehyun at checkers. Kai comes close by pure un-virtue of cheating, and nastily too. Apparently he gets petty when people go revealing his intent to invite someone else into his relationship and earn him a second boyfriend. Who would know?

However, it's the same aforesaid second boyfriend who stops him from cheating and nearly chokes him out over it, so Yeonjun says he’s still won. Though it’s hard to tell when the board gets upended. 

It continues something like that, with a few days of long progress and one shortened day of demon fighting. Despite this, it’s pretty good what they’ve got going. A solid pace that still nets them two days of early arrival thanks to Yeonjun dodging the one village containing a Demon General who’d fought Soobin for like three episodes straight and was most often blamed for killing him. He didn’t actually show up anywhere else, but a wound inflicted by his sword was nasty enough that Soobin couldn’t be healed by magic and suffered from a small weakening infection right until the fight with his father.

So yes, Yeonjun avoids the hell out of that village. He sends a mental apology to the villagers, but none of them had actually been killed in that arc, so he’s not too worried. He also knows that one little wound being spared won’t be enough for Soobin to survive, so as soon as they’re within the walls of the city of the School he kidnaps the triad and forces them to put him through a meat grinder as Soobin uses Diplomacy in a way that would be hot if he didn’t only get to see the frustrated rage side of it during the few breaks Yeonjun’d been forced into taking.

By the end of a week, Yeonjun is sore enough that he can’t move without whining and Soobin has a sore spot over anything mentioning Blue Jays that he never actually explains. Taehyun, Beomgyu, and Kai are having the time of their life resting when they need to and occasionally sparring Yeonjun in turns, the dirty buggers. But they bring them water, and snacks, and don’t complain when Soobin and Yeonjun whine at the same time about two different things, so Yeonjun thinks he will let them live.

He’s still nowhere near good enough to beat all of them at once, but he’s getting good enough to have a few single digit numbers in his favor in their challenges. He doesn’t let it get to him; in the tropes they undoubtedly are, their main point is their unbeatability. It’s almost funny how ridiculously overpowered they all are. It’s not until Soobin points out that he’s been training for less than a year and can already beat them that he realizes that counts with _him,_ too.

He’s seen a lot of weird things, lately, but he thinks this might take the cake. He’s good at everything, but not as good as any one of them. 

It’s almost so refreshing that he forgets what’s going to happen, until Soobin slams his door open in the middle of Game Night and hoists him up by the shirt.

“Did you know?!” He asks, frenzied. It takes Yeonjun the seconds until he repeats to understand it. “Did you _know?_ ”

He can’t help but nod. Instead of leaving, Soobin just punches Yeonjun, and while it does hurt he knows the alternative would hurt worse, so he bears it until Kai screams something about a promise at Soobin and Yeonjun wakes up in the medical ward with him clutching his hand as if his life depended on it.

“Soobinie?” is the first thing he says, and Soobin nearly brains himself on one of the curtains in his rush to look up, moon-eyes teary. “Don’t you dare cry. Don’t you dare, because then I’m gonna cry, and we’re in public-”

“I’m not,” Soobin says, sniffling, and one of his hands comes up to caress the side of his face. Yeonjun can’t help the flinch, and it all goes downhill as soon as Soobin freezes.

“Wait,” Yeonjun starts, but Soobin isn’t listening, looking between Yeonjun and his own hand as if it were his greatest betrayer, “I said, wait, you idiot, don’t-”

It’s too late; Soobin is out the door as Taehyun comes in, carrying a mango and a small letter that turns out to be from Soobin himself, because he hadn’t planned on staying that long, apparently. Yeonjun kind of wants to kiss him, cry, and beat him into a pulp. Not necessarily in that order.

What does end up happening is that the triad end up going after him, armed to the teeth and promising (“ _Promise_.”) to bring him back alive. Yeonjun waits a total of two hours before healing himself and following after them, angry and terrified and someone no one should mess with.

The Demon Country is just as unforgiving as he imagines it. It helps that the two groups go right ahead of him, lightening the load significantly via killing almost all of the demons that stray in their paths.

He gets closer day by day, first watching the triad for a few days, before he finally reaches Soobin, in all his stupid glory. If Yeonjun cries seeing him again for the first time, it’s no one’s business but his own. He doesn’t approach him immediately, no matter how much he wants to, because he knows he’ll just get sent back, and he’s not about to let himself come and go because people think they know where he has to be.

He does kill the few demons he can before they reach Soobin, grinning when Taehyun, Beomgyu, and Kai finally catch up with Soobin themselves and nearly give themselves away in their joy.

“Hyung, Yeonjun-hyung was worried out of his mind when we left,” Taehyun tries, and it’s a good attempt. Seven out of ten, milking Soobin’s guilt complex. Except Soobin is currently angry at Yeonjun, so of course it doesn’t work, and all it does is make Soobin look particularly twisted up like he just ate something nasty.

“Hyung, just wait until they send the magic users,” is Kai’s attempt. Yeonjun expected better from him, honestly. He should know Soobin doesn’t care by now; he’s too close.

Beomgyu doesn’t even try. Instead, all he does is be creepy and stare at Yeonjun’s hiding place. Yeonjun knows he probably has seen him, but Beomgyu is Beomgyu, so he just stays dangerously still to give him the sign of _“Don’t tell them, asshole._ ” And it works. Somehow.

None of the demons are actually enough to slow all of them together down, and with Yeonjun’s cautious spellwork on the sidelines it’s not that long before they’re actually in front of the Demon King’s castle.

Yeonjun would laugh at the irony of them only being on time now if he wasn’t also scared out of his wits. The ground around the castle is a mottled purplish brown, while the castle itself is made of dark gray stone that Yeonjun swears turns black at night. They camp one day outside of it and Yeonjun is already more than done with it, even more when he realizes that he can’t follow them inside. Not if he doesn’t want to be caught.

So he reasons it’s far enough for him to have come (damn right at the finish line) that Soobin won’t be able to send him back so easily, and he drops down from the trees to the ground in front of them and nearly gets a sword stabbed right through him. He swears, dodging with a timed barrel roll, and realizes jumping down unannounced might not have been his best idea.

Yeonjun looks up at all of them, breathing heavily and staring at him as if they’re not quite if he’s himself, Soobin himself looking haunted, and greets them with a lame, “Hey.”

“Oh my god,” Taehyun says, sheathing his daggers and pointing accusingly at Yeonjun as the rest do the same with their own weapons. “Oh my _God_ . I shouldn’t be surprised at this point, but _Oh my God_.”

“He’s been around for a while,” Beomgyu gripes immediately, grinning at Yeonjun when he shoots him a frown, “I noticed him a long time ago. He’s gotten good at staying hidden, though.”

“No _shit_ ,” is what Kai says, and it actually scares all of them. Yeonjun has never seen him angry enough to swear. That might be beyond saving. “You’re really awful, you know that, right _Noona_?”

Yeonjun blinks in confusion for a few seconds, pointing at himself when he doesn’t see anyone behind him. “Yeah, I’m talking about you. Look at your hair! You’re just… Something.”

Yeonjun thinks Kai might be crying a little as he says that last thing, which is concerning all on its own. He lets Taehyun and Beomgyu deal with it as he turns to Soobin, who still looks like he’s seen a ghost and is not happy about it.

“You can’t stop me from being here,” Yeonjun huffs flatly at him. Soobin shakes his head, still staring at him. Yeonjun is starting to get a little freaked out by it. Maybe something happened he didn’t see during one of the fights? A clip to the head, or something?

The thought that Soobin might be felled because of his negligence is sobering. He straightens, walking up to him and looking at Soobin directly in the eye, subtly checking for a head injury and finding nothing wrong before he speaks.

“Aren’t you gonna say anything?” Yeonjun asks, uncomfortable. Soobin, again, shakes his head, but this time he puts his hands on Yeonjun’s shoulders and looks into his face.

“I thought you hated me,” Soobin murmurs, so quiet Yeonjun can barely hear him over the bickering. The concept is so ridiculous that he at first thinks he's kidding, except there’s no reason for him to laugh at it now, which means that for some reason he thinks that it might actually be true, and that just won’t do.

“I couldn’t,” Yeonjun answers back, swallowing down any greater confessions to let Soobin lead the way through the gates. Now isn’t the time to make each other falter with unnecessary information. He just lets Soobin move forward, focused as can be. Soobin does take a second to hug him, specifically, before they finally break into the Castle, which he thinks is more than enough to live with.

Surprisingly, nothing attacks them when they enter the Castle. Surprising to everyone but Yeonjun, at least, who walks near the rear with a sure step and his blades held high. They don’t get attacked when going up the stairs, either, or walking along the halls. Yeonjun wants to laugh at the utter bafflement on their faces, but he knows that logistically they’re right to be confused. No King should be so utterly unguarded.

Not unless he’s sure he doesn’t need it. And Yeonjun knows that’s exactly what’s happening; the Demon King’s ego is hard-pressed to be beat, shining so brightly it’s visible from within him when they finally stumble upon the throne room. Even just walking inside is an intense pressure, the feeling of his presence alone difficult to live around. One by one, each of them wrenches themselves from the grasp of the King, finally turning to look.

He’s just as grotesque as Yeonjun remembers him being, a creature of impure emotions and pure, condensed rage taking a semi-humanoid form. How Soobin ever came from something like this, they will never know.

There’s not even a greeting before Soobin’s already at his father’s throat, bringing the sword down and being swatted away to the side. It takes Yeonjun an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize they’re just speaking in a language he can’t communicate in, which means he can’t say anything to refute whatever garbage the Demon King is spraying. 

Meanwhile, the chamber floods with a number of demons of lower status, immediately those of which head towards Taehyun, Yeonjun, Beomgyu, and Kai like moths to flame. There must be hundreds of them, all coming and surrounding them until they have no choice but to start hacking. 

The triad hold their own neatly, dealing with the cacophony of demons with a speed Yeonjun has never seen them use before. Taehyun is a whirlwind of blades, shredding whatever stumbles into his path, while Beomgyu uses brute strength alone to tear a demon in two. Kai seems to just be vaporizing them if one gets too close, though he occasionally pulls out his sword to recover mana, he assumes. 

_They’re going to be fine_ , he thinks to himself, and skirts around the edge to observe Soobin’s fight. He genuinely doesn’t understand anything, not like Soobin clearly does, so Yeonjun’s head is miraculously clear as he throws a dagger at the King’s back and actually finds his mark. The King freezes. The dagger isn’t enough, of course, but it’s a hit, and he seems to almost take offense judging by his expression of true murder directed at Yeonjun. 

Of course, he doesn’t have long to focus on him before Soobin’s sword nearly nails him in the spine, only dodging at the last second. Yeonjun looks at Soobin, meeting his eyes and giving him a smile as the other practically eye-pleads for him to go away. As far as he knows, his excuse is not being fluent.

The battle continues like that: Yeonjun does his darndest to be a distraction, and the Demon King is a lot simpler than all the credit he gets. Despite this, it’s not easy. It’s life or death, and Yeonjun can _feel it_ ―he can feel himself growing tired and weary, can feel his spells slow and his strikes land less often. By contrast, Soobin seems to get even faster, to hit even harder, and do even more damage the more time goes by.

Yeonjun is so exhausted, in fact, that he doesn’t notice when one of his knives goes wide, hitting a blade coming up behind Soobin away, nor does he recognize it as the fatal strike. He just keeps throwing, keeps launching spell after spell and praying that they all make it out okay.

_I don’t want him to die_ , is all he’s thinking. He lets himself be consumed by it, a little less than a puppet being controlled by strings automating the attacks. 

Minutes later, Soobin’s sword meets flesh proper, a head hits the ground, and before he knows it the battle is over. Just like that.

It takes him one second to process the King’s death. It takes him two seconds to process their overall success.

And it takes him three seconds to realize Soobin is relatively unharmed, grinning, and most importantly: _alive_.

“Hyung! I guess you were-” Soobin turns to look at Yeonjun, Taehyun having immediately gone to hug Soobin, and freezes as he sees him crumple to the ground in nothing but pure relief, “Hyung! Did you get hit anywhere? Are you bleeding? What happened?”

Yeonjun just lets out a deranged cackle, lying flat on his back and looking up at the domed ceiling. The polluted mana is already starting to clear, when the King’s body is still cool and not even graved, and here he is unable to stand up because he’s too _happy_.

A shadow falls over his vision; Soobin, leaning over him, checking his body over for any big wounds that might make him collapse. Yeonjun grins despite himself, “You’re not gonna find anything. This is a pure adrenaline crash, sorry.”

“Oh,” Soobin says smartly. Yeonjun sticks his tongue out at him.

It’s Kai who helps Yeonjun up, letting him lean on him for support, but Soobin does come up and collect Yeonjun’s unoccupied hand, threading their fingers together as they all take a moment and breathe.

* * *

It takes a few months for the nightmares after that night to lessen. Not of the battle, of the dead bodies hitting the floor and the blood of demons flowing. Not of him thinking it was all a dream, that the battle was yet to be done and the King still roamed the land.

No, his nightmares are much the same as before. That he’ll wake up to find that he failed, and Soobin is dead. He takes to sleeping in Soobin’s room, waking up automatically when he leaves for his demon cleanup shift and not being truly calm until he sees him safe and sound upon return. He knows it’s to be expected, with how it plagued him for the months before, but it’s frustrating to wake up and have to see Soobin in any capacity before being a functional human being.

It’s yet another of those days when he finally has enough. He drags Soobin off from the breakfast table and pushes him into a low-traversed hall, without surveillance.

“What are we here for?” Soobin asks, laughter dancing at his lips nonsensically. “Are you telling me a secret?”

Yeonjun considers changing his plans to that. Briefly. But in his head, that’s over and done with, really, and he can’t really bring it up again. In this case, he thinks, it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.

“No,” he answers, then amends, “Yes, but it’s not like what you’re thinking.”

Soobin looks at him, laughter dying down into confusion, “What do you mean?”

Yeonjun feels a bead of sweat roll down the side of his head. _Now or never_.

“I’m in love with you,” he blurts out, blunt. Soobin lets out a sound that resembles something like a cat being held underwater. “I know, I know. I just wanted to tell you to get it out, since it feels like it’s eating at me. You don’t have to love me back, or anything. I’m okay with just being friends.”

He says this, but he can’t bring himself to look up at Soobin’s face. _How embarrassing_.

“You’re kidding,” Soobin says, a raw, odd emotion tingeing his voice. Yeonjun winces; he didn’t think Soobin would just dismiss his feelings like that. _Ouch_. 

But then he hears, “-with you, seriously. Anyone can see it. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is for me to get _Kai_ of all people telling me to ‘tone it down’? It’s humiliating!”

Yeonjun really needs to start paying more attention, he thinks, because that almost sounds like, “You―me?”

Soobin’s hands come up to hold Yeonjun’s face, pushing it up to look him in the eye. His eyes are still the little moon crescents, but at this distance Yeonjun can finally see the difference between his iris and his pupil, wholly dilated.

“Yes.” he says, thumb brushing against Yeonjun’s cheekbones, and Yeonjun is _Gone_. Absolutely gone.

“Kiss me,” he says, urgent, practically begging, “Please, kiss me, won’t you?”

Soobin indulges him, pressing warm, chapped lips against his, his eyelashes fanning at Yeonjun’s face as he blinks and breathes and _lives_ next to him. With him. In him and all around him. His lips are a soft push and pull, a reminder that he is moving and warm yet.

And Yeonjun thinks that it was all worth it, both this life and the last, if this is what he gets.


End file.
